U.S. Senate will vote on the T-MEC or USMCA trade agreement

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How would Trump's political trial affect Mexico? 4:08

(CNN) - Senators from both US parties are expected They meet this Thursday morning to approve the main legislative priority of the Trump administration, the revised North American Free Trade Agreement (T-MEC or USMCA), amid the historic process of President Donald Trump's political trial.

"We anticipate the Senate will end the USMCA tomorrow and we will send this historic trade agreement to President Trump for his signature," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, on the Senate floor Wednesday night. after the camera received the charges of political trial.

MIRA: The House of Representatives approves the T-MEC, Trump's trade agreement with Canada and Mexico

Among other changes, the agreement includes new provisions for digital commerce, implements stricter rules of origin for auto parts and includes new minimum wage requirements for certain workers in the automobile manufacturing sector.

It was signed by the leaders of the three countries in November 2018, but the text was changed after months of negotiations between the Trump administration and the House Democrats. The new version enshrined additional labor protections and eliminated the controversial patent protections for biological medicines.

While Trump has argued that NAFTA was "perhaps the worst trade agreement ever made," the trade agreement has broad support among Senate Republicans, who are now in a position to approve a new version of the agreement, including the policies adopted. by Democrats and backed by the famous AFL-CIO, the largest labor union in the United States, skeptical about trade.

But the Republican Party has largely maintained its support for Trump. Only two Republicans voted against the new agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada when the House was overwhelmingly approved in December. And Senate Republicans who have questioned some aspects of the agreement, such as its disposition for termination, say in general that they will still support it because the agreement will provide stability to American workers.

MIRA: Would the ratification of the USMCA help Mexico reactivate investments?

“It is a good agreement. It is not a perfect agreement, ”said Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas during the Finance Commission hearing on the agreement.

Democrats are also expected to strongly support the agreement in Thursday's vote. But some, like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, plan to vote against. Whitehouse said the environmental protections in the agreement are not strong enough.

In the Senate, the parliamentarian demanded that the bill pass through several votes in commissions before reaching a full vote. The last one, the Foreign Relations Commission, voted to advance the agreement on Thursday.

The final approval of the bill in the Senate will be the culmination of years of hard negotiations and work. Throughout the process, many legislators and lobbyists doubted that ratification would ever occur, especially in a divided Congress.

During the hearing of the Senate Finance Commission on USMCA implementation legislation, President Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and a former defender of the agreement that helped lead him to ratification, said the effort to approve the agreement had "Tested my patience sometimes."

The president of the House of Media and Media Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said that when the agreement between the House Democrats and the Trump administration was announced, negotiations had often warmed up, joking that he and the business representative from the United States, Robert Lighthizer, probably set a world record for how many times they had hung up on each other.

"There is no doubt, of course, that this trade agreement is much better than NAFTA," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, at the same press conference.

LOOK: Trump signs the first phase of a trade agreement between China and the US

But some lawmakers who support free trade disagree: Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, one of the most vocal Republican opponents of the USMCA, argued against the Senate on Wednesday morning.

He criticized the new requirements for automakers and ridiculed the 16-year extinction provision.

"The default setting is for this to disappear," he said, noting that no commercial agreement that the United States has agreed in the past has included a suspension provision.