West Wing Reads Mexico Becomes First Country to Approve USMCA

Mexico Becomes First Country to Approve USMCA “Mexico’s Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of approving the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, a deal that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement,” Zachary Halaschak reports in the Washington Examiner. “The measure passed with a 114-4 vote, bringing the agreement one step closer to fruition . . . Canada has already introduced legislation through its parliament to ratify the agreement and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to lobby Democrats to support the USMCA during his visit to Washington, D.C., this week.” Click here to read more. “Last month, 144,000 people were arrested at our southern border. Many of these people were not trying to escape the Border Patrol, but were turning themselves in. Why? Because our asylum process is laughably easy to take advantage of,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) writes in Fox News. “House Democrats remain silent on the issue, leaving Americans with only one impression: that they don’t actually want the asylum crisis to be solved; that they don’t want illegal immigration to end; that they don’t want to improve the conditions migrants are held in.” “Breaking the law must have consequences,” writes National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd in Fox News. Our immigration laws are no exception—and whenever they’ve gone unenforced, criminals have historically exploited the loopholes. Consider this example: “In the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector during the early 2000s, the United States Attorney's office implemented a [500 lb.] ‘threshold’ on the prosecution of marijuana smugglers,” Judd writes. So what did the smugglers do? “Oftentimes the loads would be exactly 499 pounds.” “There’s too much at stake for our farmers to let this opportunity pass by. USMCA will expand economic opportunity in the heartland,” Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) writes in the Washington Examiner. “However, as things stand, USMCA is being held hostage by career politicians in Washington who are hell-bent on preventing President Trump from getting a win. A delay in approval of this agreement will hit the wallets of family farms in Illinois and across the country.” “President Trump values his opinion, just as President Ronald Reagan did throughout the 1980s. On Wednesday, Art Laffer, 78, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, at the White House,” Fox Business reports. “A champion of low taxes and tax cuts, he has earned a reputation that has made him one of America’s most noted economic advisers to several U.S. presidents.”