Almost 200 members of Congress slammed Mexico for its record on labor rights and urged the Trump administration to take a tough stand on the issue in the current talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The overwhelmingly Democratic group of 180 lawmakers said Mexico’s labor policies are partly to blame for the outsourcing of U.S. jobs below the border.
“Even after Mexico’s constitutional reforms this past year, we have yet to see meaningful progress on the ground or have confidence in their impact. The authoritarian style labor structure, stacked labor boards and government-aligned unions combine to limit the ability of workers to seek wages increases,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter Tuesday to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
The lawmakers urged the administration to back “strong, clear and binding provisions that address Mexico’s labor conditions. Given the ingrained resistance to labor rights in Mexico, we must demand real and identifiable progress on labor reforms take place before Congress votes on a renegotiated NAFTA.”
Mexican leaders would be unlikely to go along with such changes since they would eliminate its chief competitive advantage in international commerce: its low labor costs.
All but one of the letter’s 180 signatories were Democrats, with Rep. Walter Jones, R-Calif., the lone Republican. The letter was sent the same day the U.S. entered the sixth round of talks with Mexico and Canada to renegotiate the 1993 trade deal. The talks are being held in Montreal.
The negotiations were originally expected to conclude in March, but the U.S. and Canada have said they are open to extending them through the summer.
The talks have not gone well for the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican officials at the negotiating table. Canadian and Mexican officials specifically rejected U.S. demands to change the rules for determining when a product can be labeled as “made in America” or “made in the U.S.A.,” arguing that the changes would damage the auto industry, whose supply chain is spread throughout the continent. The administration is also pushing to add an end date to NAFTA as well as to allow countries to opt out of its investment dispute settlement system, changes the trading partners also object to.
President Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. would pull out of NAFTA if the administration’s demands are not met.
