Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are upset that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement, which passed in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, does not contain “a single damn mention of ‘climate change.'”
Sanders wrote on Twitter, “250 pages. 37,500 words. Not a single damn mention of ‘climate change,'” then proclaimed that “Trump’s NAFTA is a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry.”
“I voted NO because the future of our planet is more important than the short-term profits of Exxon Mobil and Chevron,” he asserted alongside a video detailing his decision.
He stated in the video:
So here you have an existential threat to the future of America, to the future of our entire planet, and what the scientists are telling us, we have very few years to get our act together to take on the fossil fuel industry, to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. And here you have a major trade agreement, which, in fact, will make it easier for the large oil companies to destroy our planet from Mexico.
Sanders has suggested on the campaign trail that fossil fuel executives are “probably criminally liable” for climate change, and he has expressed interest in potentially prosecuting them.
“Socialist Bernie Sanders just proudly voted AGAINST new jobs and higher wages for Americans workers,” the Trump campaign wrote in an email to supporters in reaction to Sanders’ position.
“Sanders is willing to sacrifice blue-collar jobs and better wages, even as he enjoys flying fossil fuel burning private jets on an almost daily basis,” it continued.
Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed Sanders’ presidential bid, concurred with Sanders’ sentiments about the USMCA, calling it a “carbon emissions nightmare.”
“Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 is an enormous, multinational prize for climate deniers and the fossil fuel industry,” she claimed.
“It’s a carbon emissions nightmare that locks the US in for YEARS & blocks whoever wins the presidency in 2020 from negotiating a better deal,” she continued. “It’s a bad idea, folks”:
The Senate passed the USMCA on Thursday, voting 89 to 10, thereby sending the tremendous legislative achievement to President Trump’s desk. Even the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the agreement on bipartisan lines, 358-41, last month.
As Breitbart News reported:
The USMCA maintains much of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but will usher in new trade considerations, such as 75 percent of vehicle parts must be made in the three countries to be tariff-free. Additionally, 45 percent of car parts must be made by workers earning a $16 hourly wage. Further, the deal will expand U.S. farmers’ access to Canada’s dairy market.
Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News’s Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle in an exclusive interview that the passage of the USMCA is a “huge win” for “American workers and American farmers.”
“It is a historic achievement following decades of shuttered factories and lost jobs in the wake of NAFTA,” the vice president told Breitbart News.
“President Trump as a candidate promised we would renegotiate our trading agreement with Canada and Mexico,” Pence continued.
“I think the vote you saw in the House of Representatives, the vote you saw in the United States Senate, gave evidence to the fact that even Democrats in Washington recognize that this is a win for the American people and would not have been possible except for the leadership and determination of President Donald Trump,” he added.
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