Science-driven, rules-based trade is under attack, and American agriculture stands to lose access to a critical market as a result. President Joe Biden must speak up on behalf of corn producers. Otherwise, an entire industry, as well as the United States’s ability to hold our trading partners accountable, will be at risk.
In 2018, with Donald Trump in the White House and Nancy Pelosi on the speaker’s rostrum, the passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement enjoyed perhaps the most bipartisan support of any free trade agreement in modern American history. One of USMCA’s key provisions, agreed to by all three signatory nations, was a prohibition on any import restriction without scientific basis.
Last month, in Mexico City, the U.S. and Mexico participated in a two-day dispute settlement hearing over a decree first issued in December 2020 and revised in 2023 by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to ban imports of genetically engineered, or “biotech,” corn for human consumption. Both unscientific and groundless, this action violates USMCA and could have severe consequences for the future of U.S. agriculture and consumers around the world who benefit from American food production.
American farmers are already facing a record $32 billion agriculture trade deficit, double from last year, and cannot afford to lose market access, much less in a neighboring nation that is supposedly one of our closest trading partners.
The response from the Biden administration has been painfully slow. Inexplicably, it took repeated congressional actions to get the administration to engage with this dispute fully despite the severe economic risk.
Naturally, in turn, Mexico has also slow-walked its response.
Thirty-two months after Mexico’s initial decree, in August 2023, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai finally submitted a request for a dispute settlement panel under the terms of USMCA. While Tai testified the president has been briefed on this matter, Biden himself has yet to say anything publicly — a reflection of his neglectful posture on U.S. trade interests more broadly.
The president’s slow defense of our agricultural interests under USMCA is unacceptable. To operate in such a high-risk, low-margin industry, our nation’s agricultural producers need long-term stability. The production decisions they make today depend on a reliable world market next year.
American corn producers won’t be the only ones affected if the Biden administration doesn’t act.
In 2023, Mexico was the top market for U.S. corn, ranked as the No. 2 U.S. agricultural export. Strong concerns loom over how Mexico’s ban might also affect food security for the people of Mexico and, by extension, consumers around the world. Everyone has to eat, and with 95% of the world’s customers living outside our borders, the only realistic approach is to do everything possible to remove barriers to our producers’ extraordinary ability to meet global demand.
American agriculture’s ability to feed the planet sustainably is hopeful, even inspiring. Innovation, including biotech, allows farmers to grow five times the amount of corn grown in the 1930s on 20% fewer acres of land. In 2023, despite battling severe drought, our producers boasted record yields. This is only possible because of American resourcefulness and capacity to do more with less. We should never allow pioneering American producers to become victims of their own success while our trading partners restrict market access.
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Mexico’s ban puts enforcement of USMCA to the test, and Biden’s lack of urgency on trade puts rules-based trade at risk globally. China, the European Union, and others have taken similarly spurious actions to keep our biotech products out, with no scientific basis for doing so. Allowing Mexico to get away with such an egregious violation sets a damaging precedent and will only encourage similar actions.
The dispute settlement panel must undertake meaningful enforcement actions to hold Mexico accountable, as must Biden. For our economy to thrive in the global economy, the U.S. must maintain steadfast leadership in the international marketplace, drive a hard bargain, and hold our trading partners to their commitments. With the integrity of USMCA at stake, a simple word from Biden would do much to accomplish this.
Adrian Smith is a U.S. representative for Nebraska serving on the House Committee on Ways and Means as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Trade. Max Miller is a U.S. representative for Ohio serving on the House Committee on Agriculture.
