James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal asks if Speaker Pelosi wants to force Mexico to pay for a trade wall with her failure to schedule a House vote on the USMCA trade pact:

The Speaker of the House who called a border wall with Mexico "an immorality" is still sitting on a Mexican request to approve a new trade agreement. What is the morality of ignoring this key priority of our southern neighbors? (snip)

In a letter this week, Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador takes another shot at persuading Mrs. Pelosi to take yes for an answer on a union-friendly renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement:

Dear Madam Speaker:

Following up on my letter dated October 8, I would like to inform you that, with approval of our 2020 federal budget, which includes appropriations for implementing the labor law reforms that I have promoted, we have fully met our commitments regarding the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). (snip)

Is the Speaker trying to make Mexico pay for a new trade wall simply to prevent a Trump policy success? 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (cropped).

The answer to his question is yes, Mexico and Americans and Canadians will all pay for a failure of the USMCA to be ratified by the House.  Freeman properly calls out Pelosi's hypocrisy on defending Mexico from the purported threat of Trump:

News consumers who spent last winter watching the Speaker preside over a government shutdown rather than allow funding for a border wall — which she called "an immorality between countries" — must be baffled at her sudden indifference to the concerns of our Mexican friends.

In December of last year, the Associated Press reported on one of the many occasions on which the Speaker expressed outrage at the idea of imposing costs on Mexico:

Pelosi told colleagues privately that Trump insisted during an Oval Office meeting that Mexico will pay for the wall "one way or another."

She told him Mexico isn't going to pay for it. The president responded that Mexico would pay with money the U.S. will make from the revised North American Free Trade Deal, known as USMCA.

Pelosi told the president "that's terrible" and told him she's going "go out and tell people that you think that Mexico is paying for it with money that should be going into our economy."

The President of Mexico is now telling Speaker Pelosi that if she won't accept the USMCA, Mexico is going to pay a significant price, and a lot of money will not be going into the North American economy.

I fully expect President Trump to amp up his pressure on Pelosi, linking her failure to move ahead on USMCA, which has bipartisan support, because of the House's focus on impeachment.