House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that a Brexit that makes a full break with the European customs union will not be rewarded with a U.S. free trade deal. Pelosi, who issued a statement Aug. 14 after National Security Adviser John Bolton said that a free trade agreement with Britain could be done quickly after Brexit, though he said it would have to tackle easier issues first and tackle other sectors later.

Republican senators urged the European Union to increase sanctions on the Nicolas Maduro-led regime in Venezuela, saying in a letter the EU should “align its sanctions regime” with that of the U.S. and Canada, according to an Aug. 8 Senate Foreign Relations Committee press release. The senators said the U.S. and Canada have imposed sanctions on more than 200 Venezuelan government officials, and the EU’s support would “send a powerful message” to Maduro.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, raised the possibility that he would not be able to broker a compromise between the two approaches on restraining the president's ability to levy tariffs under Section 232. While he said his goal is to have a committee meeting in late September or early October that would take up a "Grassley-Wyden" version, he said if that can't happen, he will bring forward competing bills and allow lots of amendments to shape them.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., say an overvalued dollar and other countries' efforts to devalue their currencies created the trade deficit that meant "90,000 factories have closed down, thousands of family farms have gone bankrupt, and millions of manufacturing workers have lost their jobs." The Midwestern senators have introduced a bill, called the Competitive Dollar for Jobs and Prosperity Act, that aims to fix that. They announced the bill -- along with support from Trump allies like the Coalition for a Prosperous America -- on July 31.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill on July 31 that would sanction anyone involved with Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The bill authorizes the Trump administration to impose a series of sanctions on those involved, including restricted use of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, restricted export licenses, asset freezes and more. The administration cannot use the measures to ban a sanctioned person from importing goods into the U.S., the bill said. If Congress passes the bill, the State Department would be required to submit an annual report to Congress on all entities involved in the pipeline project.

The House passed a bill July 25 that urges the president to “prioritize” a new framework to improve export licensing. The provision, part of the Department of State Authorization Act of 2019, said the administration should “streamline licensing” by revising “Special Comprehensive Export Authorizations” for exports to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, any of the organization's member countries, Sweden and any other country described in the Arms Export Control Act. The bill also makes several technical changes to the AECA, including an amendment that changes the purposes for which U.S. military sales are authorized from an “internal security justification” to a “legitimate internal security (including for anti-terrorism purposes).”

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Sen Pat Roberts, R-Kan., that the U.S and Europe are at an impasse on trade talks, because the EU is not willing to talk about its barriers to U.S. agriculture exports.

The Senate on July 29 failed to override President Donald Trump’s vetoes of three separate resolutions blocking the U.S.’s arms deal with Saudi Arabia and with the United Arab Emirates. The effort failed in each of the votes -- 45-40, 45-39 and 46-41 -- which needed a two-thirds majority to pass. The sales, announced in May by the State Department, used the Arms Export Control Act’s emergency provision to bypass congressional approval and move forward with 22 arms transfers worth about $8 billion to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

A Democrat from Texas and one from the San Diego area led a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging a vote on the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement, as the new NAFTA is called, before the end of 2019. Rep. Colin Allred, who defeated a Republican incumbent in the Dallas suburbs, and Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., sent the letter July 26.

House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who led a trip to Mexico with nine other House members last week, said that everyone came away impressed with Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Blumenauer said that in his opinion, the entire Mexican Cabinet is clearly committed to changing labor laws in Mexico so that its workers can be better paid. "Lots of money was made [from NAFTA], but workers in the United States, workers in Mexico, are no better off in inflation-adjusted terms," he said.