2020 presidential candidates on NAFTA and USMCA

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Presidential election
Donald Trump

Joe Biden

Howie Hawkins

Jo Jorgensen

This page includes statements from the 2020 presidential candidates on NAFTA and USMCA. These statements were compiled from each candidate's official campaign website, editorials, speeches, and interviews. Click the following links for policy statements about related issues: trade and tariffs.

The candidates featured on this page are the 2020 presidential nominees from the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Green parties.

Donald Trump
Joe Biden
Howie Hawkins
Jo Jorgensen

NAFTA and USMCA

Republican candidates

Donald Trump

Donald Trump's campaign website says, "With the completion of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, the Trump Administration successfully fulfilled President Trump’s promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. The USMCA is a modern trade agreement that opens new markets for U.S. farmers and manufacturers, will encourage increased manufacturing in the U.S., and allow workers and small businesses to flourish." ^{[source, as of 2020-06-22]}

Mark Sanford

Mark Sanford's campaign website does not include a position on NAFTA or the USMCA.

His website says about trade, "I also believe that the international trading system, created after World War Two, vital to America’s foreign policy. In this light, stability and predictability are important. Friends and foes alike need to have a sense of what America will do next. Alliances and investments are not made without predictability. We are not getting this from the White House and I believe the increasing talks of tariffs, and the seemingly daily changes of presidential perspective are undermining our standing in the world." ^{[source, as of 2019-09-10]}

Joe Walsh

Joe Walsh's campaign website does not include a statement outlining his position on NAFTA.

In an op-ed about Donald Trump published in The New York Times, Walsh wrote, "He abuses the Constitution for his narcissistic trade war. In private, most congressional Republicans oppose the trade war, but they don’t say anything publicly. But think about this: Mr. Trump’s tariffs are a tax increase on middle-class Americans and are devastating to our farmers" ^{[source, as of 2019-08-30]}

Bill Weld

Bill Weld said in a debate, "Mr. Trump thinks that a car made in North America is made by either the United States or Mexico it's a zero sum game. So we have to beat up on the Mexicans. He doesn't understand that the average car made in North America travels across the US Mexico border 22 times because depending on the wage scale for that stage of production. So everybody makes out better with free trade and the United States always makes our best because we have the highest productivity per worker. So we get the high wage jobs." ^{[source, as of 2019-09-24]}

Democratic candidates

Joe Biden

Joe Biden said in an interview that he supported the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement after it passed in the U.S. House in December 2019. Biden said, "What I've seen change is that the vast majority of the labor movement supported it." He said it eliminated some loopholes for drug companies and strengthened the enforcement of labor and environmental standards. ^{[source, as of 2019-12-20]}

Michael Bloomberg

Mike Bloomberg's campaign website does not include a statement on NAFTA or the USMCA.

Mike Bloomberg said in a speech about trade, "Spreading the benefits of trade more widely is part of a bigger economic question: how do we promote growth that is inclusive, sustainable, and fair? And how do we address people’s real fears about the future? My friend Tom Friedman at The New York Times has a smart way of thinking about these issues. He once wrote: ‘The best ways to manage the ups and downs of trade is to strengthen your floors, not raise your walls or build ceilings.’ In other words the answer isn't to build walls along borders or around industries, through tariffs." ^{[source, as of 2019-01-15]}

Cory Booker

In a statement provided to the Citizens Trade Campaign, Booker said, "I am opposed to President Trump’s new NAFTA deal. It should be renegotiated to strengthen labor protections and environmental standards, and improve access to prescription drugs." ^{[source, as of 2019-06-25]}

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg said he agreed with a Citizens Trade Campaign statement saying "the revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ... should not be enacted unless and until stronger labor and environmental terms with swift and certain enforcement are added and language on pharmaceutical monopolies that locks in high medicine prices is removed." ^{[source, as of 2019-06-24]}

Julián Castro

Julián Castro's website did not include a position on trade. In an interview with New York Magazine's Intelligencer, Castro said the following when asked about his position on NAFTA: "We have this global economy that already is established, and we’re competing in. It’s not realistic to think that we’re going to withdraw from that wholly. I do think that we ought to only strike trade agreements that are good for American workers and American companies. I disagree with people who say we’re going to close off trade."

Castro also said, "I do think we need to hold countries accountable who violate trade agreements that are already in place. We need to get stronger about enforcement, that in the future if we strike a trade agreement, toughening up labor standards and environmental standards and enforcement standards is something we absolutely need to do. The thing is, look at what President Trump did on this renegotiation of NAFTA. He didn’t scrap NAFTA, what he did is make a few incremental changes to it. And so I hope that the American people get that even the president recognizes that there can be value in boosting American workers and American companies, and there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that we have with other countries in trade." ^{[source, as of 2019-02-02]}

Tulsi Gabbard

Tulsi Gabbard's campaign website does not include a statement about NAFTA.

Tulsi Gabbard tweeted about trade, "Trump’s trade wars are a disaster. Billions in bailouts to farmers. Unstable markets for small businesses. We need trade policies that put the people first." ^{[source, as of 2019-02-26]}

Kamala D. Harris

Kamala Harris said in a CNN interview, "I would not have voted for NAFTA, and because I believe that we can do a better job to protect American workers."

Harris continued, "I also believe that we need to do a better job in terms of thinking about the priorities that should be more apparent now perhaps than they were there, which are issues like climate, the climate crisis, and what we need to do to build into these trade agreements. ^{[source, as of 2019-05-12]}

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar's campaign website did not contain a statement outlining her stance on NAFTA or the USMCA. ^{[source, as of 2019-08-28]}

Beto O'Rourke

Beto O'Rourke wrote in a Medium post, "Beto’s approach to trade has been shaped by his hometown experiencing the opportunities trade brings as well as the consequences workers face when labor standards are not enforced. In the wake of NAFTA and its failure to protect American workers, El Paso lost more than 22,000 jobs. But in recent years, the community’s economy has begun to recover and county unemployment has reached a 29-year low. On day one, Beto will end Trump’s trade wars, which have not only failed to curtail China’s economic aggression, but hurt American workers. And recognizing that trade can unlock opportunity for growth for all communities and enhance small businesses across the country, Beto will aggressively pursue smart trade agreements that defend American values and interests." ^{[source, as of 2018-08-29]}

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders opposes the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Sanders' campaign website says the following: "Sanders is the only 2020 presidential candidate who has called for Trump to scrap his new NAFTA, saying that the proposed trade deal does not include adequate protections for workers. Sanders is calling for all 2020 candidates to support: An executive order ending federal contracts to corporations that outsource American jobs. A commitment to renegotiate all of our unfair trade deals to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs and raise wages. A promise to avoid appointing trade representative from Wall Street. A pledge to repeal Trump’s tax breaks that reward companies for moving their factories overseas." ^{[source, as of 2019-04-29]}

Tom Steyer

Tom Steyer's campaign website does not include a position on NAFTA or the USMCA.

His website says of trade in the context of climate change, "Reduce the threat of global conflict and support other nations to achieve prosperity without fossil fuels by meeting and increasing our investment in international clean energy and sustainable development systems, eliminating our demand for fossil fuels, leading a worldwide transition to clean energy, and using the global purchasing power of the United States and international trade agreements to send a clear signal that the fossil fuel era is coming to an end and the clean energy age has begun." ^{[source, as of 2019-09-10]}

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren's campaign website says the following: "For too long, our economic policies have left workers with the short end of the stick. We need to strengthen labor standards – and then fight to enforce them. That’s why Elizabeth will oppose Trump’s new “NAFTA 2.0” unless he produces a better deal for America’s working families. It’s time to stop prioritizing corporate profits over American paychecks." In a plan published online, Warren said the following: "Like trade deals of the past, Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 is written to help giant multinational agribusinesses at the expense of family farms, and it will do nothing to solve the newly created market insecurity Trump’s tariffs have caused." ^{[source, as of 2019-08-26]}

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang's campaign website says, "As President, I will: Ensure that any trade negotiation includes stringent environmental standards. Ensure that any trade deal doesn’t include carve-outs or exclusives for oil, gas, or coal. Renegotiate any trade deal that includes carve-outs for fossil fuel industries, including the ISDS exceptions in NAFTA/USMCA." ^{[source, as of 2019-08-29]}

Green candidates

Howie Hawkins

Howie Hawkins' campaign website says, "I oppose the USMCA, the renewed NAFTA. It continues a corporate-managed trade system that hurts workers, consumers, the environment, and democracy. The USMCA retains the secretive authoritarian Investor-State Dispute Settlement process from NAFTA that includes corporations and states and excludes labor unions and the public. That enables the deregulatory agenda of big business. USMCA favors corporate agribusiness over small farmers and ranchers working the land."

His website continues, "Labor standards will remain as unenforceable under USMCA as under NAFTA. USMCA overprotects patent and copyright intellectual property monopolies at the expense of consumers. USMCA is a climate killer that enables Big Energy to frack the hell out of the whole continent, to build more pipelines and other infrastructure to move oil and gas to refineries, and then burn it for power and transportation. It’s the protection of fracking and the oil and gas industry is where Colorado will feel it most." ^{[source, as of 2020-07-09]}

Libertarian candidates

Jo Jorgensen

Jo Jorgensen's campaign website says she opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). ^{[source, as of 2020-07-28]}

Other policy pages

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2020 presidential candidates on abortion

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Footnotes