Democrats say they have an opportunity to stand up to President Donald Trump on trade. They just haven’t reached a consensus on what their trade agenda is.
The Trump administration opened the door to a renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. In a hearing with senators this week, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said he wanted interim agreements with both countries by the end of the year, and to tackle thornier issues in 2027.
Those talks, according to Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-California), are Democrats’ chance to “take back trade” from Republicans, who he says have conceded to the president’s aggressive tariff regime.
But Democrats, he said, need to get to work smoothing out their policy differences.
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“The consensus isn’t developed yet,” Panetta said. “But I think now more than ever we should be.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, led a letter to Trump in November advocating for “significant renegotiations,” primarily to address Mexican wage issues, create new labor and environmental protections and enforce existing ones. That letter was signed by 104 other House Democrats.
Panetta was not one of them. The New Democrat Coalition wrote a letter, led by Panetta, last November advocating for more of a fine-tuning of the agreement. Only a handful of Democrats like Reps. Darren Soto (D-Florida), Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Steven Horsford (D-Nevada) signed both letters.
“I would say 90% of the congressional Democrats, House and Senate, have a particular position, which is pretty much reflected in DeLauro’s letter, which lays out at a high level the whole kit and the caboodle,” Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program and an expert on congressional trade battles, told NOTUS. “However, there are outliers.”
These are the big-picture ideas Democrats agree on: they don’t want to exit the deal entirely as Trump has threatened to, they want certainty for businesses and, broadly, they want to strengthen labor and environmental protections.
The disagreements come down to the specifics. For example, DeLauro called for stronger rules of origin — the guidelines that specify a product’s nationality — whereas Rep. Linda Sánchez of California, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means trade subcommittee, instead argued that existing rules just needed clarification.
DeLauro’s letter panned USMCA as a failure that offshored U.S. manufacturing jobs. The New Democrats’ letter makes no mention of offshoring, and the coalition called the trade agreement a “cornerstone of North American competitiveness” in a letter Monday.
Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) said her Democratic colleagues who supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which USMCA replaced, are engaging in talks on strategically deploying tariffs to protect American jobs from offshoring.
“What we have seen in Mexico is that wages are lower, environmental standards are not the same as we have here, and it’s not fair that we offshore issues like underpayment of workers or environmental degradation to another country. We can’t be blind to that,” Hoyle said.
“They are open to that conversation, and I’m talking to people who come from very, very different places on what tariffs should be, and I feel like we’re in a really good place,” she added.
As they find their footing, multiple Democrats signaled frustration over communication between the Trump administration and Congress on USMCA.
“I’ve been surprised that there has not been consultation,” Rep. Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts) told NOTUS last week of the White House’s communication with Congress.
Democrats said there’s been a more open line of communication with Greer. DeLauro told NOTUS that she and others met with Greer recently to discuss their interests.
So far, Democrats’ efforts to exert influence over USMCA have been limited to letters and statements, hampered by the fact that they are in the minority. But they could find themselves in a position of real leverage and influence should they take the House in the midterms.
After Democrats won back the House in 2018, the new majority forced the Trump administration to redo USMCA negotiations to secure members’ votes. Unlike in 2019, however, approval from Congress is not required unless the Trump administration negotiates changes to the USMCA that are significant enough to require legislation to be changed or updated. Already the administration has signaled it does not want the agreement to go to Congress.
“If Dems take back the House they, have substantial oversight capabilities, which is a really important tool to drive the narrative through hearings and engaging with the administration,” said Allison Smith, a vice president at communications and lobbying firm Lot Sixteen and a former deputy assistant U.S. trade representative.
Democrats are prioritizing trade on the campaign trail. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee cited tariffs as one of Republicans’ biggest vulnerabilities heading into the crucial elections.
In the interim, Panetta and DeLauro told NOTUS they think the differences are surmountable.
“We voted for it the first time around. Now we’re talking about what are the changes that need to be made, and you know where we are on digital trade, wages and offshoring. You know, the environmental piece,” she said. “The rapid-response mechanisms work, but it’s got to be better. We’ve got to focus on making the agreement more worker-centric.”
“I think the discussions are beginning. I think we can come out in the same place.”
Panetta, however, did raise another possible complication. Some congressional Democrats are just not up to speed on the issue.
“There are different levels of understanding of trade by different levels of members,” Panetta told NOTUS. “There are members who aren’t really as on trade, yet they’re politically driven rather than policy driven.”
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