Tag Archives: United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

Mexico resists U.S. demands on trade deal, wants Senate to back tweaks

Mexico resists U.S. demands on trade deal, wants Senate to back tweaks
By Dave Graham

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president on Tuesday pushed back against U.S. efforts to subject his country’s labor market to external oversight under a new North American trade deal, and said the Mexican Senate should be consulted before new changes are signed off.

Mexico approved the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) earlier this year, but U.S. ratification has been held up by Democratic lawmakers seeking to have stricter enforcement of new Mexican labor rules enshrined in the deal.

Speaking at a regular morning news conference, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said there was no need for supervision of Mexico’s labor standards because his government was fully committed to strengthening workers’ rights.

“We don’t accept that there should be some sort of inspectors checking on whether a company is sticking to what is established by law,” the veteran leftist said.

Instead, Mexico is ready to accept panels made up of representatives of the United States, Mexico and a third country reviewing standards over an extended period, Lopez Obrador said.

Mexican senators should be entitled to give their opinion on what he described as an addendum to the accord, because they would need to ratify any additions, he said.

The president noted Mexican business associations rightly regarded the imposition of monitors on its labor market as a provision which could impede investment.

Mexico’s powerful CCE business association said it was extremely concerned about some of the U.S. labor demands, describing them as “extreme and totally unacceptable.”

“We have the impression that some U.S. players are trying to apply pressure to stop a deal,” the CCE said in a statement. “Respect for Mexican sovereignty is not negotiable.”

Mexico’s chief USMCA negotiator, Jesus Seade, was on Tuesday traveling to Washington for more talks, the government said.

Seade said last week tweaks could be made to how labor disputes are handled to enable an accord, but was cautious on whether a deal was possible this year.

Gearing up for the November 2020 U.S. presidential election, Democrats have been under pressure from American trade unions to ensure that Mexico does not backslide on commitments to strengthen the rights of organized labor in the country.

Those unions have pressed for labor rules that could make lower-cost Mexico less attractive to U.S. companies, which have increased their manufacturing capacity south of the border significantly over the last two decades.

Lopez Obrador said he hoped the USMCA would be approved soon so that the accord is not increasingly caught up in the politics of the U.S. election campaign.

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Steve Orlofsky and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S., Canada, Mexico sign trade deal after last-minute brinkmanship

U.S. President Donald Trump, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto attend the USMCA signing ceremony before the G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina November 30, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Roberta Rampton

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – The leaders of Mexico, Canada and the United States signed a North American trade pact on Friday after brinkmanship over the final details of the deal continued through the eve of the signing.

They agreed on a deal in principle to govern the more than trillion dollars of mutual trade after a year and a half of acrimonious negotiations concluded with a late-night bargain just an hour before a deadline on Sept. 30.

Since then, the three sides have bickered over the wording and the finer points of the deal and still had not agreed just hours before officials were due to sit down and sign it as the G20 summit kicks off in Buenos Aires.

Legislators from the three countries still have to approve the pact, officially known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), before it goes into effect and replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s spokesman only confirmed his attendance late on Thursday. Before signing the deal he continued to refer to as “the New NAFTA,” Trudeau told Trump the two should continue to work together to eliminate steel and aluminum tariffs.

Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto joined the ceremony on his last day in office.

Trump had vowed to revamp NAFTA during his 2016 presidential election campaign. He threatened to tear it up and withdraw the U.S. completely at times during the negotiation, which would have left trade between the three neighbors in disarray.

Trump forced Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the 24-year-old agreement because he said the existing pact encouraged U.S. companies to move jobs to low-wage Mexico.

U.S. objections to Canada’s protected internal market for dairy products was a major challenge facing negotiators during the talks, and Trump repeatedly demanded concessions and accused Canada of hurting U.S. farmers.

A side letter to the September agreement showed that Trump preserved the ability to impose threatened 25 percent global tariffs on autos while largely exempting passenger vehicles, pickup trucks and auto parts from Canada and Mexico.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Caroline Stauffer in Buenos Aires and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Chizu Nomiyama)