WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, today joined Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, James Risch, R-Idaho., and John Barrasso, R-Wy., to discuss their committees’ plans to report the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) favorably next week.

“When you’ve got a good trade agreement, we sell twice as many of our goods and products to those countries as we do to the rest of the world,” Wicker said. “This update of NAFTA, this bipartisan achievement of USMCA, is good for America, it is good for workers, it is good for agriculture to the tune of $2.2 billion.”

Once the committees have favorably reported the agreement, it can be considered by the full Senate for final passage.

“The parliamentarian has required that we report it. We are going to do so on an expedited basis, and on a bipartisan basis. And that will be part of the quick response next week to moving this along toward reality,” Wicker said.

The USMCA agreement is a much-needed update to the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It was negotiated by President Donald Trump in 2018 and was recently approved by the U.S. House of Representatives after a significant delay from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Now that the agreement has come to the Senate, USMCA is expected to receive expedited consideration and be ratified with wide bipartisan support.