Congress Should Quit Procrastinating on USMCA

Like any high schooler with a short attention span, members of Congress are expert procrastinators and save all the hard work for right before class starts or the few days before vacation. The House is set to adjourn for two weeks, even as key policy issues remain unaddressed. In particular, lawmakers are still negotiating the ins-and-outs of the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA), preliminarily agreed to by the three countries in September 2018. This successor agreement to NAFTA contains key intellectual property (IP) protections, and ratification through Congress is pivotal for continued innovation across the continent. Like (many) high schoolers waiting until the last minute to get their assignments done, hopefully lawmakers ace their homework assignment and get everything right.