Nancy Pelosi, new NAFTA naysayer, makes history as latest House Speaker

Jan 3, 2019 | 1:16 PM

WASHINGTON — A vocal critic of Canada’s trade agreement with the United States and Mexico has been re-elected as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the first woman in history to hold the gavel twice in her political career.

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi is poised to preside over a diverse collection of representatives — the 116th Congress includes 102 women, a new record — as she girds for battle with U.S. President Donald Trump.

And the hard-won new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the presumptive successor to NAFTA, could be hanging in the balance with President Donald Trump contending for the first time with a potentially combative House under Democratic control.

Along with a number of other Democrats, Pelosi has made it clear she won’t support the deal without stronger enforcement measures for its new labour standards and environmental protections.

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The Democratic freshman class includes a number of barrier-breaking women, including the first Muslim women, Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib of Michigan; as well as the first female Indigenous members, Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland.

The latest iteration of Congress also made a darker form of history, as Thursday’s swearing-in took place for the first time under the shadow of a partial government shutdown — the result of a standoff with the White House over funding for Trump’s long-promised wall along the southern border.

The Canadian Press