U.S. Congress

Since the United States appointed the first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues in 2009, ten more countries have followed, creating new posts focused on women's rights and gender equality.

Over the more than half a century since the United States embraced its integration into the global economy, it has produced both the strongest and the weakest of the advanced economies. The strengths are obvious in the United States' brilliant scientific establishment, its top-ranked universities, its lead in innovation, and its world-beating companies from Apple to Amazon. The weaknesses have never been more obvious than during the current outbreak of the coronavirus–among these a woefully inadequate health insurance system, lack of paid sick leave and other basic job protections, and an unemployment insurance system that encourages companies to fire workers quickly. The virus has ruthlessly exposed the shortcomings of a country that has failed to remake itself for the world it now occupies. When the pandemic recedes, the United States will face some of the toughest questions in its history about how to retool itself for the modern world. In my 2016 book, Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy, I told the story of how economic globalization caught the United States off-guard. For most of our history, we were a reasonably self-sufficient economy, with an expanding domestic market that was more than large enough to exploit economies of scale. So as trade, global travel, and financial integration began to grow explosively in the 1960s, the United States was slow to recognize that it needed to adapt its institutions to the new realities. One of the most telling examples is the program known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). It was launched by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 with the explicit goal of helping to support and retrain those who would lose jobs as a result of the coming acceleration of global competition that Kennedy and future presidents embraced. "When considerations of national policy make it desirable to avoid higher tariffs,” Kennedy said, “those injured by that competition should not be required to bear the full brunt of the impact.” Despite the soaring rhetoric, the program was stillborn–under-funded by Congress and overly restrictive from the start. When the surge in Chinese imports in the early 2000s contributed to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, only a small fraction of displaced workers received TAA. Far more exited the labor market entirely through programs such as Social Security disability. TAA is only one example of where U.S. institutions are poorly designed to deal with disruptive change, which has been accelerating over the past several decades. Whether the causes are trade competition, financial crises, job-displacing automation, or an unexpected and lethal pandemic that spreads across the world, the United States sorely lacks the capacity to help its citizens manage these shocks. Two of the most glaring deficiencies are the absence of sick leave for a significant portion of the workforce, and an unemployment benefits system that requires companies to fire their employees before those workers have access to any government aid. The first has helped undermine efforts to contain the virus, and the second means that economic recovery in the United States is likely to be especially prolonged. The importance of paid sick leave has never been more obvious than during this pandemic. Workers who fear losing pay, or even their jobs, if they fail to show for work are likely to shrug off the slight cough or fever that is the first sign of infection. Yet a large portion of U.S. workers lack access to this basic right. Only 43 percent of part-time workers get paid sick leave, for example, compared with 83 percent of the full-time employees. Among the top 10 percent of income earners, 93 percent have paid sick leave; for the bottom 10 percent, fewer than one in three enjoy the same right. The unemployment insurance system is similarly riddled with holes. Benefits for workers only kick in after they have been fired from their jobs, which has encouraged companies to lay off workers in droves. In the last two weeks of March, more than ten million Americans were thrown onto the unemployment rolls, more than 6 percent of the entire U.S. labor force. In contrast, Germany, the UK, Denmark and many other European countries are supporting the wages for workers who remain employed, allowing companies to keep them on staff and resume operations quickly as the economy recovers. In contrast, many U.S. workers will not be rehired until the consumer economy picks up and companies regain confidence in the future. That could take several years, depending on how long it takes to develop a vaccine or other cures for the coronavirus. Unemployed workers also face impossible choices on health care coverage, because the United States remains the only advanced economy without some form of universal health insurance. They can maintain their former job-based plan–if they had one–only by paying the full costs through COBRA. Or they can take their chances on the ObamaCare market, where many plans come with huge deductibles. These issues are just the tip of a very large iceberg. Lower-income Americans are woefully unprepared for retirement, and the crash in stock markets will make it worse. A new St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank survey says that among those without a high school diploma, or only a GED, just 22 percent had any sort of retirement savings, and among those with savings the median balance was just $35,000. Even among middle-income families, the picture is fairly bleak. The average retirement savings for couples over sixty-one, for example, is just $132,000–enough to generate just $5,200/year in retirement income on top of Social Security. One piece of good news is that the stimulus bill passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress was properly ambitious. The measures to increase unemployment insurance, including expanding coverage to gig economy workers, will be especially critical in helping the growing ranks of the jobless. But the bill was premised on a short-term economic shutdown of no more than a few months. If it lasts longer than that, Congress will either need to find more funding, or many Americans will run out of resources. Poorer Americans will be at the mercy of whether the two parties in Congress can continue to find ways to cooperate. If the money does not keep flowing from Washington, many Americans will find themselves unable to pay for mortgages, rent, health care bills, and other critical needs. What the country needs is not a series of short-term bailouts, but long-term plans to ensure that most Americans are protected against such crises in the future. Will this be the event that finally drags the United States into the twenty-first century? We certainly have the capacity to learn. The 2008 financial crisis, for example, exposed the dangerous fragility of the U.S. banking system; reforms put in place by Congress and the Obama administration in the aftermath, for all their shortcomings, left the financial system in a much stronger place to withstand the current economic shutdown. But the lessons of the pandemic will be harder to absorb, because it has fully revealed the massive inadequacies of a social safety net designed for another era. We can learn that lesson and remake the country for the world we now inhabit. Or we can keep lurching from one crisis to the next.

As fears of the growing coronavirus pandemic are leading to something close to a temporary shutdown of the U.S. economy, the moment has come to listen to the most important young political voice in the country: Andrew Yang. Yang’s dark horse run for the Democratic presidential nomination was based on the simplest of ideas: if Americans are poor and struggling, give them money. He took the idea of “universal basic income” (UBI) from the stuff of think tank analyses and policy books to the front pages of newspapers. Its moment has come more quickly than he could have imagined. Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican senator, has joined a growing chorus of Democrats in calling for direct cash grants of $1,000 to all American adults to help them weather the economic hit from the virus. As Congress is considering additional measures to help an economy that is careening into recession, getting money quickly into the hands of struggling individuals and families must be a top priority. To be clear, I have not always been a fan of UBI. In our 2018 CFR Independent Task Force on the Future of Work, we called for more targeted measures of the sort that are also under consideration now—extending sick leave to all working Americans, wage subsidies, increasing tax credits for lower-income workers, and strengthening unemployment insurance. In ordinary economic circumstances, such targeted measures may offer more bang for the buck. But the overwhelming virtue of UBI is its simplicity. It gets money to individuals in need, and out into the wider economy, more quickly than any other alternative. Unemployment insurance only kicks in after people lose their jobs, and does not fully cover many part-time and gig economy workers, or others who may see a temporary sharp reduction of their income during the crisis. Aid to small businesses will be critical, but the loans are complicated and often take months to disburse. A cash transfer has immediate impact that these other measures cannot match. That money is going to be needed quickly. In just the past several days, governors in major states from New York to Washington have ordered the closure of bars, restaurants, gyms and other recreational facilities. All concerts, conventions, sporting events and other mass gatherings have been canceled. Most Americans have appropriately stopped travelling, which is pummeling the airlines and hotels. Many retail establishments from Apple to Starbucks are shutting down or reducing hours. In an economy where consumer spending drives 70 percent of economic growth, millions of American workers are going to feel the impact immediately. It is heartening to see shows of personal generosity, such as NBA rookie phenomenon Zion Williamson, who has pledged to cover the salaries of New Orleans’s arena workers for one month. But the reality is that most Americans will have little or nothing to fall back on. Even with the solid economic growth of the past decade, some 40 percent of Americans still say they do not have the resources to cover a $400 emergency. The cost of UBI, of course, looks daunting. There are roughly 210 million Americans aged 18 or older, so the first $1,000 check would cost the government about $210 billion. And there is no reason to think one month will be sufficient. The current closures are likely to last at least two months, and possibly much longer. Despite the $1 trillion budget deficit currently being run by Washington—much of it brought about by the irresponsible 2017 tax cuts for companies and wealthier Americans—there is no question that such quick relief is affordable. The Fed has now cut overnight interest rates to near zero, and in the current market chaos, investors will still want to hold even very low interest-bearing Treasury debt. The money is there if Congress asks for it. Beyond that, who knows? Americans may find that the stability provided by a steady monthly check is exactly what they need in the current era, where the economic uncertainties of daily life are multiplying. It could mark the beginning of a long-overdue rethinking of how to help more Americans flourish in the economy of the twenty-first century. The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession left a poisonous political legacy in part because Americans believed that we were not all in it together. Big banks and others were bailed out, while many Americans suffered through grinding months and years of unemployment or part-time work or unmanageable mortgage payments.  This crisis is a chance at a do-over. All Americans must have the means to take time from work to protect their health, or the income to stay home and support their families as needed. If they don’t, the virus will likely spread more quickly and the economic pain will linger far longer. Andrew Yang is right. Give money to people. Do it now.

With the signing of the Protocol of Amendment to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on December 10, 2019, the battle over USMCA now moves to the Congress. Throughout the two-and-a-half year negotiating process, a threat by President Trump to withdraw from USMCA’s predecessor, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has hung over the negotiations, with significant legal uncertainty over whether the president has the authority to do so absent action by Congress. Congress now has the chance to clear up that ambiguity and to reassert its constitutional authority over trade policy. But to do so, it will have to act fast. It is likely that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) will bypass the traditional process of holding a “mock markup” that would allow the Congress to propose amendments to both the legislation implementing the USMCA and the accompanying Statement of Administrative Action (SAA), which outlines executive branch commitments on how the provisions of the USMCA will be implemented. Rather than follow the usual order, USTR is expected to introduce a final, non-amendable bill next week, along with a (presumably amended) SAA, for quick consideration by the House Ways and Means Committee before it is sent to the House floor for final passage. Given the indications from Senate Majority Leader McConnell that the Senate will not take up the USMCA until after the impeachment trial ends early next year, it is not clear why all of the procedural steps in the fast track process must be waived. Before it is too late, Congress should insist on including a number of items in the implementing legislation or on essential changes to the May 30, 2019, draft Statement of Administrative Action (SAA). Indeed, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s transmittal letter for the SAA emphasized that the submission “is just that –a draft. It does not in any way prejudice the content of the final implementation package, i.e., the final SAA, final implementation legislation, and the final, binding text.” Now is the time for Congress to hold Ambassador Lighthizer to his word and insist on changes to the implementing bill and the SAA in the following areas: 1. Withdrawal from USMCA The language of the USMCA mirrors that of the NAFTA: any party may withdraw from USMCA by providing written notice of withdrawal to the other parties, with the withdrawal taking effect six months after notice is given. USMCA Article 34.6. What the text of the NAFTA and the USMCA do not say is who gets to decide to submit the withdrawal notice, under what authority, and pursuant to what procedures. Congress should fill in those blanks by insisting on language, preferably in the implementing bill itself but if not, in the SAA, that spells out a process and clear role for Congress before any withdrawal notice can be sent. If it takes an act of Congress under the well defined Trade Promotion Authority procedures, input from stakeholders and advisory committees, and a formal economic evaluation from the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) to enter into the USMCA, surely it ought to take at least some process and congressional input to withdraw. The May 30 draft SAA is completely silent on how the Trump administration intends to implement the withdrawal provision. Congress should insist that either the implementing legislation itself or the SAA include a commitment to a transparent process, including public hearings, input from the trade advisory committees, a USITC economic evaluation of the costs and benefits of withdrawal, and a fast-tracked Congressional vote before a notice of withdrawal can be sent to the USMCA parties. 2. Six-Year Joint Reviews Article 34.7 of USMCA calls for a meeting of the Free Trade Commission (consisting of trade ministers of the United States, Canada, and Mexico) at least every six years. The purpose of the meeting is to conduct a joint review of the USMCA’s operations, to consider any recommendations for action submitted by one of the USMCA parties, and to confirm each party’s desire to extend the USMCA for a sixteen-year period. Here too the May 30 draft SAA is silent on how the Trump administration intends to approach these six-year reviews. Congress should insist that either the implementing legislation or the SAA include a clear role for Congress in developing recommendations to be presented on behalf of the United States at the joint review sessions, and, as noted below, in determining whether to confirm continued U.S. participation in the UMSCA. 3. Decision to Invoke the Sixteen-Year Sunset Clause Article 34.7(1) states that the USMCA shall terminate sixteen years after it enters into force unless each of the three parties affirmatively confirms its desire to continue the agreement for a new sixteen-year period. That confirmation must be made in writing at the six-year joint review meetings. Congress should treat the decision to allow the USMCA to terminate at the end of the sixteen-year period the same as a notice of withdrawal. A decision not to confirm the United States’ continued participation in the USMCA ultimately has the same legal effect as withdrawal. It should be done only following a full process that includes input from all stakeholders and trade advisory committees, a USITC economic evaluation, and a vote of Congress. The uncertainty created by the manner in which U.S. trade policy has been conducted over the past three years has led to numerous calls for Congress to reassert the power expressly given to it by the Constitution to establish tariffs and regulate foreign commerce. The problem has been the limited opportunities for Congress to do so. The USMCA presents just such a chance. On the essential issue of whether to enter into and whether to exit as important a trade agreement as the one with our two largest trading partners—Canada and Mexico—Congress should insist on playing a central role. It should make it clear that the president does not have the authority to act without the express authorization of Congress.

In the history of the domestic politics of trade, the breakthrough announced this week on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is a genuine milestone. Following intensive negotiations—involving House Democrats, the Trump administration, labor unions, and the governments of Mexico and Canada—the three countries announced an agreement that will now lead to the ratification of a new trade architecture for North America. Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, can fairly claim to have taken a big step in his promise to restore bipartisanship to U.S. trade policy. Ironically, however, the breakthrough came the same day in which the architecture for global trade—the World Trade Organization (WTO)—was plunged into the greatest crisis of its quarter century history as a result of U.S. intransigence. The United States has crippled the WTO’s capacity to resolve trade disputes among member nations, leaving the future of the organization in serious doubt. The question now—can the shaky new U.S. consensus on trade open the door to agreements with other countries? Or has the United States condemned itself to negotiations only with countries so highly dependent on the U.S. market, like Mexico and Canada, that they will submit to one-sided deals? Robert Putnam, the political scientist, famously argued that international negotiations are a “two-level game.” For international agreements to be reached, governments need not only to negotiate with other governments, but with their own domestic constituents. Agreements can break down at either level. For trade negotiations, the domestic side of that bargain has been weakening steadily in the United States for some three decades. When the Tokyo Round global trade agreement was ratified by Congress in 1979, the deal passed by a vote of 90-4 in the U.S. Senate, and 395-7 in the House of Representatives. The free trade agreement between the United States and Canada, passed in 1988 was nearly as popular. But the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the predecessor to USMCA, passed by just 234-200 when it was put to a vote in the House in 1993. A majority of Democrats voted against their own president, Bill Clinton, in opposing the deal. From there, Democrats became increasingly skeptical of trade. Republican President George W. Bush won House support for fast-track trade promotion authority by a single vote in 2001, with just twenty-one Democrats voting in favor. The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) passed by two votes in 2005 with the support of just fifteen Democrats. Labor union opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a huge deal that would have freed up trade among the United States, Japan, and ten other Asia-Pacific nations, was a big reason that Democratic president Barack Obama could not get the agreement through Congress before he left office. The newly-minted President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal on his third day in the White House, calling it a sell-out of American interests. In the context of that history, the new USMCA is a big deal indeed. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has voiced her strong support. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has endorsed the deal, the first time labor unions have backed any trade pact since the tiny U.S.-Jordan deal in 2001, and the first time they have supported any trade agreement of consequence since the Kennedy Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the 1960s. The deal came after a long back and forth between House Democrats and the Trump administration, in which Lighthizer supported the Democrats on issue after issue. The new USMCA includes a long wish list of Democratic trade priorities, including tighter rules of origin for car manufacturing, the virtual elimination of investor-state dispute settlement, intrusive provisions aimed at strengthening independent labor unions in Mexico, stronger protections for environmental laws, and weakened protection for pharmaceutical patents. Pelosi and the House Democrats repeatedly praised the Trump administration’s willingness to work with them on the deal. The politics have changed profoundly in the Republican Party as well. Had a Democratic president tried to push through such changes in USMCA, Republicans would have denounced the deal as a socialist abomination. It goes much further to address Democratic concerns than Republicans and their big corporate backers had ever been willing to consider. Many Republicans opposed Obama’s TPP, for example, because it was seen as too weak in protecting the interests of pharmaceutical companies, but the USMCA does even less for the drug companies than TPP. Yet Republicans will ignore the complaints from the industry and vote for the deal anyway. Trump has remade the GOP into a party of economic nationalism, and his congressional supporters will follow lockstep in approving the USMCA. What does this mean for the rest of the world? It will not have gone unnoticed that Canada and Mexico had to negotiate twice to get this deal—first with the Trump administration, and again with House Democrats. Mexico in particular was forced to swallow a series of provisions on labor rights that could be seen as threats to Mexico’s sovereignty. But both Mexico and Canada are so dependent on the huge U.S. market that they had no choice but to find a way to yes. Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said candidly: “They conceded just about every point we asked for.” He went on to say the USMCA would now be “a template for future trade agreements.” But if this new hybrid of Trumpian nationalism and Democratic progressivism is what it now takes to do trade deals with the United States, there may be very few takers. China, for instance, has so far resisted the Trump administration’s demands for wholesale reforms to its economic model—demands that enjoy widespread support among both Republicans and Democrats. The European Union would support many of the Democratic objectives on labor, environment, and investor rights, but has resisted Trump’s demands on agriculture and the U.S. trade deficit with Europe. In the WTO, the Trump administration’s complaints over what was seen as over-reach by the Appellate Body, the final court of appeal in trade disputes, were shared by the Obama administration. But the United States has been unable to persuade other WTO members to undertake big reforms, and instead has let the Appellate Body die by refusing to permit the appointment of new judges. Democrats in Congress have yet to raise a whisper of protest. And so other countries are now scrambling to find new ways to resolve trade disputes among themselves rather than acceding to U.S. demands. The genius of Putnam’s theory was to show that international agreements only come about, and can only be sustained, when both levels—the domestic and the international—line up properly. With the USMCA deal, the United States may have found a way back to bipartisan consensus on trade. But it may also be a very lonely spot.

After six months of escalating police violence and protester resistance, matters in Hong Kong have come to a head. Now is the time for Washington to ensure that all sides know that the United States stands with those struggling for freedom, democracy, dignity, and the rule of law.

As Congress argues over the 2020 defense authorization bill, there is one issue that should provide common ground: the benefits of investing in women’s contributions to security. The House has already passed a set of provisions requiring the Defense Department to better draw on women; these should become part of the bill ultimately sent to the White House.

The Democratic candidate has laid out a comprehensive trade policy, but it speaks more to party activists than to voters.

A look at the post-9/11 war powers law that the Trump administration could use to justify conflict with Iran.

On June 13, CFR Senior Fellow Jamille Bigio testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing on “Women in Conflict: Advancing Women's Role in Peace and Security.” During the hearing, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) cited CFR’s research on women’s representation in peace negotiations.

Earlier this month, the Donald J. Trump administration launched the new U.S. Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security. Is the new strategy a sign that the United States will finally make its own security work more effective by including women? CFR Senior Fellow Jamille Bigio argues that the real test will occur in conflicts around the world, from Afghanistan to Colombia to Yemen.