Mexico, US and Canada revamp Free Trade Agreement

By James Blears

The new deal, which is called USMCA, took a year of tough marathon negotiation, during which President Donald Trump several times questioned the usefulness and benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as it then stood.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says that the new Agreement will provide greater certainly plus security to Mexico, Canada and the United States in their mutually linked commercial relationships stressing: "There are clear rules. There can`t be border closures or tariff increases without legal procedures, involving panels of the three."

Part of this involves more stringent labor laws, especially concerning rules of origin and greater parity of workers` pay.  And this necessitated law changes in Mexico, approved by its Congress.  President Lopez Obrador will be travelling to Washington on July 8th and 9th to meet President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to celebrate this trade progress.  July 1st also marked the second anniversary of Lopez Obrador`s Presidential Election win.  But little to celebrate with almost 28,000 dead from the Pandemic, more than a million jobs lost,  a more than twelve percent slump of the Peso against the Dollar this year, an expected ten percent shrink in the economy this year, and homicides up, mostly linked to Mexico`s drug cartels.