After approval by the U.S. Congress in December, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has been approved by the U.S. Senate in an 89-10 vote. The new treaty now goes to President Trump for his signature, moving the agreement an important step closer to implementation after months of both domestic and cross-border political contention.

The U.S. and Mexico, which officially backed the USMCA in June, now wait on Canada’s final ratification. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Jan. 21 that legislation will be ready Jan. 29, and that the government would move forward immediately with approval of the agreement.

We celebrate the decision by Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau to hasten the process of ratification of the #USMCA: our new framework that will greatly benefit our three countries' employment, industry and peoples. pic.twitter.com/U2DBA0jsi4

— Jesús Seade (@JesusSeade) January 21, 2020

In the U.S. Senate, eight Democrats, one Republican and presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted “no.” Sanders, former presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) cited the agreement’s failure to address climate change as a reason for their disapproval.

The passage came as Senate members were sworn in as jurors for Trump’s impeachment trial, and just a day after Trump signed a “phase one” trade deal with China.

“There was a lot of momentum to get USMCA done and behind the administration before things could get really bogged down with impeachment and frankly the campaign season,” Dan Ujczo, international trade and customs lawyer with cross-border firm Dickinson Wright, told the Los Angeles Times.

It’s been a long road for the NAFTA replacement, which had been a promise of Trump’s from the early days of his administration. The USMCA was approved by Trump, Trudeau and then-Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto (who has since been succeeded by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) and trade negotiators in the fall of 2018, but it took another year before it reached the U.S. Congress, which called for changes in the agreement like more enforcement mechanisms for labor policy.

The trade in goods among the U.S., Canada and Mexico is now worth more than $1 trillion annually, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Michael Wenger, co-owner of Top 40 distributor Quality Logo Products (QLP, asi/302967) in Aurora, IL, and Counselor’s 2019 Best Place to Work, told ASI Canada he’s very optimistic about the new agreement’s positive impact on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular. SMEs, he said, make up many companies in the promo industry. Chapter 25 of the agreement discusses the importance of SMEs to the economy and lays out provisions that will benefit them moving forward, including the formation of an SME committee made up of government representatives from the three member countries.

“The USMCA will provide an easier avenue for promotional product sales in both Canada and Mexico, which are traditionally very underserved due to complexities around importation laws of the past,” Wenger said. “While suppliers like PCNA, Hit Promotional Products, alphabroder, Starline USA, Busrel and others have FOB shipping options and programs in Canada, we expect to see a further investment from them to make shipping to Canada and Mexico just as easy as anywhere in the U.S. This seems like a bright spot for our great industry.”

Ralph Goldfinger, CEO of Canada Sportswear Corp. (asi/43682) in Toronto, told ASI Canada the combination of the USMCA and the phase one trade deal with China will benefit both the promo industry and the economy at large.

“The combination of the two deals will add to world stability and GDP growth, which is good for everyone,” he said. “It’ll also put the business community more at ease. Next on the list is trade negotiations between the U.S. and Europe, which I expect will be dealt with expeditiously given that it’s an election year in the U.S.”