The End of the USMCA: A Turning Point for Emancipation
It should be remembered that, just a few years ago, Donald Trump signed the continuation of the North American Free Trade Agreement under the name of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement*, describing it as the best trade agreement ever reached. After all, he was the one who signed it.
Today, consistent with the volatility that characterizes his political performance, Trump claims exactly the opposite: Asserting that the USMCA has been one of the worst agreements for the U.S., he accuses Mexico of having taken advantage and claims his country no longer needs it. Therefore, he proposes a 10-year limitation on its validity, along with annual reviews.
It is unacceptable that the future of Mexico would depend on the constant changes of opinion of a president who still has 2 1/2 years of governing left. His patterns of contradiction and wavering, plus his arbitrary use of tariffs and his ongoing creation of confrontational scenarios, can hardly translate into benefits for Mexico.
On the contrary, the situation calls for deep reflection regarding a process of integration that began in the most intense stage of neoliberalism, both in Mexico and in the United States. The resulting negative consequences have fallen especially hard on Mexican workers. It should not be forgotten that a parallel migration agreement, which would have enabled regulation of enormous population displacement, was never accepted.
When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, it was stated that the massive arrival of investments would transform Mexico into a "first world" country. It ensured that "tomatoes and not people" would be exported. Exactly the opposite happened. The treaty gave rise to one of the most severe forms of forced migration ever experienced by this country, primarily favoring the interests of the U.S. and consolidating a relationship of subordination and economic dependence. Millions of peasants left their lands to work in the agricultural fields of the neighboring country because they could not compete with highly subsidized products from the north.
The irony is devastating. Mexico continues to import — in huge quantities — many of the same products grown on the other side of the border by Mexican peasants, expelled from their communities by that same economic model. The possibility of achieving food self-sufficiency was lost and, at the same time, millions of workers were condemned to live under the permanent uncertainty of undocumented immigration status.
Our country has undergone a profound demographic transformation. Today, millions of undocumented Mexicans reside in the United States under conditions of enormous legal vulnerability. They are kept in legal limbo, thus denied full access to labor and to the civil and social rights due to them after decades of work.
They have supported key sectors of the U.S. economy: agriculture, farms, meat packing, the poultry industry and food processing plants, among many others. And now they face inhuman and cruel persecution by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service that applies policies of purely fascist design.
The economic integration derived from NAFTA, and later from the USMCA, established Mexico as a country of factories. A substantial part of its exports have consisted of assembled goods from multinational companies that take advantage of our lower labor costs, tax incentives and virtually zero environmental regulations. Cars, trucks, television screens, as well as berries and avocados, are supplied primarily to the U.S. market, resulting in the reduction of space for food production for national consumption and further weakening the possibility of food self-sufficiency.
Nor can it be ignored how ruinous the national mining concessions have been, particularly those granted to foreign companies, many of them Canadian. As a result, Mexico has lost strategic resources in exchange for minuscule tax benefits and the loss of communal land where mining occurs. Numerous communities have denounced the dispossession of their lands and environmental deterioration. In exchange, they have received violence and death in defense of their territories.
Putting an end to this deeply asymmetrical and subordinate integration and leaving the USMCA could represent the turning point that favors the implementation of a truly sovereign national plan. It would lead to diversification of trade relations with the rest of the world; national companies strengthened under new rules of development; internal production promoted; and a duly decisive investment in science, technology and innovation.
A national plan must offer decent living conditions for the entire population, in particular, fully incorporating historically excluded sectors and, thus, guaranteeing universal access to education, health and a just ecological transition for all. To achieve this structural change, universities must be the centers of critical thinking that prevent the return of the disastrous policies that marked some of the darkest episodes in recent Mexican history.
Trump intends to subdue Mexico by placing conditions on its governmental decisions. This pressure can become the opportunity for Mexico to effect its sovereignty and join forces to curtail the growing takeover of fascism present in various regions of Latin America. And one hopes, indeed, that this time it will have met its Waterloo.
*Editor’s Note: The USMCA was not a continuation of NAFTA, but rather, a replacement for it.
Today, consistent with the volatility that characterizes his political performance, Trump claims exactly the opposite: Asserting that the USMCA has been one of the worst agreements for the U.S., he accuses Mexico of having taken advantage and claims his country no longer needs it. Therefore, he proposes a 10-year limitation on its validity, along with annual reviews.
It is unacceptable that the future of Mexico would depend on the constant changes of opinion of a president who still has 2 1/2 years of governing left. His patterns of contradiction and wavering, plus his arbitrary use of tariffs and his ongoing creation of confrontational scenarios, can hardly translate into benefits for Mexico.
On the contrary, the situation calls for deep reflection regarding a process of integration that began in the most intense stage of neoliberalism, both in Mexico and in the United States. The resulting negative consequences have fallen especially hard on Mexican workers. It should not be forgotten that a parallel migration agreement, which would have enabled regulation of enormous population displacement, was never accepted.
When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, it was stated that the massive arrival of investments would transform Mexico into a "first world" country. It ensured that "tomatoes and not people" would be exported. Exactly the opposite happened. The treaty gave rise to one of the most severe forms of forced migration ever experienced by this country, primarily favoring the interests of the U.S. and consolidating a relationship of subordination and economic dependence. Millions of peasants left their lands to work in the agricultural fields of the neighboring country because they could not compete with highly subsidized products from the north.
The irony is devastating. Mexico continues to import — in huge quantities — many of the same products grown on the other side of the border by Mexican peasants, expelled from their communities by that same economic model. The possibility of achieving food self-sufficiency was lost and, at the same time, millions of workers were condemned to live under the permanent uncertainty of undocumented immigration status.
Our country has undergone a profound demographic transformation. Today, millions of undocumented Mexicans reside in the United States under conditions of enormous legal vulnerability. They are kept in legal limbo, thus denied full access to labor and to the civil and social rights due to them after decades of work.
They have supported key sectors of the U.S. economy: agriculture, farms, meat packing, the poultry industry and food processing plants, among many others. And now they face inhuman and cruel persecution by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service that applies policies of purely fascist design.
The economic integration derived from NAFTA, and later from the USMCA, established Mexico as a country of factories. A substantial part of its exports have consisted of assembled goods from multinational companies that take advantage of our lower labor costs, tax incentives and virtually zero environmental regulations. Cars, trucks, television screens, as well as berries and avocados, are supplied primarily to the U.S. market, resulting in the reduction of space for food production for national consumption and further weakening the possibility of food self-sufficiency.
Nor can it be ignored how ruinous the national mining concessions have been, particularly those granted to foreign companies, many of them Canadian. As a result, Mexico has lost strategic resources in exchange for minuscule tax benefits and the loss of communal land where mining occurs. Numerous communities have denounced the dispossession of their lands and environmental deterioration. In exchange, they have received violence and death in defense of their territories.
Putting an end to this deeply asymmetrical and subordinate integration and leaving the USMCA could represent the turning point that favors the implementation of a truly sovereign national plan. It would lead to diversification of trade relations with the rest of the world; national companies strengthened under new rules of development; internal production promoted; and a duly decisive investment in science, technology and innovation.
A national plan must offer decent living conditions for the entire population, in particular, fully incorporating historically excluded sectors and, thus, guaranteeing universal access to education, health and a just ecological transition for all. To achieve this structural change, universities must be the centers of critical thinking that prevent the return of the disastrous policies that marked some of the darkest episodes in recent Mexican history.
Trump intends to subdue Mexico by placing conditions on its governmental decisions. This pressure can become the opportunity for Mexico to effect its sovereignty and join forces to curtail the growing takeover of fascism present in various regions of Latin America. And one hopes, indeed, that this time it will have met its Waterloo.
*Editor’s Note: The USMCA was not a continuation of NAFTA, but rather, a replacement for it.
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