WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives voted Thursday in favor of a new trade deal for North America, delivering a hard-fought victory to President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, just a day after Democrats impeached the president.
The legislation passed on an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 385-41, with a large majority of Democrats voting in favor of the deal, upending the party’s longstanding skepticism toward massive trade bills like the North American Free Trade Agreement that the new deal would replace. In a further reordering of the politics of trade, the new pact has the endorsement of major labor unions including the AFL-CIO. The Senate is expected to act on the package next year.
The outcome is the result of months of frenzied yet secretive negotiations that took place without Pelosi or Trump ever speaking directly, though the new trade rules could serve as top political accomplishments for both leaders. To circumvent the frayed relationship between the president and the House speaker, Democrats worked directly with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a globalization skeptic who agreed to make numerous adjustments to garner their support.
The final result amounted to a breathtaking realignment in the complex politics of trade, especially coming just a day after the intensely partisan vote on impeachment.
‘‘We stuck to it. And so we’ve arrived at this ‘it can never happen’ moment,’’ House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in an interview. ‘‘I think it is a template for the future.’’
The new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, was signed a year ago by Trump and the leaders of Canada and Mexico to replace the 25-year-old NAFTA, which Trump campaigned against in 2016 and lambasted as terrible for American workers.
That view was shared by many Democrats and union members who blamed NAFTA for the decline in US manufacturing, making it a rare issue where Trump found more common ground with Democrats than with Republicans.
Republicans, before Trump became president, had traditionally been much more supportive of ‘‘free trade,’’ or the idea that companies should be able to sell products internationally without facing import barriers. Trump has challenged that idea, saying he is in favor of ‘‘free and fair trade.’’ He has moved to impose tariffs on imports from numerous countries in an effort to try to pressure companies to relocate jobs to the United States.
Even after being signed by the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the USMCA still required approval by legislatures in each country.
That gave Pelosi the opportunity to leverage Trump’s desire for a win on trade, and along with Neal she engaged forcefully on the issue. She appointed a nine-member working group in June that spent months meeting with Lighthizer in various locations around the Capitol, exchanging countless proposals, and working through one impasse after another. Last month, Pelosi took over the talks, and along with Neal launched intense negotiations with Lighthizer and with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, whose support Pelosi was determined to obtain.
House Democrats, who viewed the initial deal as unacceptable, achieved substantial changes. They jettisoned pharmaceutical protections sought by drug companies and added provisions ensuring higher labor standards in Mexico, quicker dispute resolutions, higher environmental standards, and stronger enforcement of all elements of the deal.
Still, a number of Republicans were uncomfortable with the changes negotiated by Democrats, including the exclusion of a 10-year protection period for a costly class of drugs called ‘‘biologics’’ which had been part of the original deal. After holding out for months, the White House agreed to remove the protections in a final concession during the last weekend of talks. For Democrats, that moment vindicated their months of negotiations while also helping to lock down support from Mexican officials who had opposed the pharmaceutical protections all along.
It was a rare defeat for the powerful pharmaceutical industry lobbying group, which withdrew its support for the deal after that change was made.
The USMCA is the first multi-country trade deal to be considered by Congress since the US negotiated a free trade agreement with a group of Central American nations in 2005.