Mexican trade chief adds fresh urgency to USMCA

Mexico's deputy foreign minister Jesús Seade has urged US opposition lawmakers to move quickly and ratify the USMCA trade deal now that Mexico has passed requisite legislation that aligns the country’s laws to the labor chapter of the trilateral agreement.

The Mexican government published the sweeping labor reforms in the federal gazette on Wednesday after approval in the senate on Monday.

Speaking at the 14th LatinFinance Financial Summit in Mexico City, Seade touted the legislation as a historic achievement, and with its passage, he believes Mexico has upheld its end of the bargain.

Ratification in the US lower house, however, remains less than certain.

The US midterm elections in November swept the opposition Democratic party into power in the house, putting a kink in the expected ratification of the treaty, which is a major priority for US President Donald Trump.

Prior to Mexico’s labor reforms debate in April, top Democratic lawmakers, including lower house leader Nancy Pelosi, warned Mexico that the labor reforms were an essential step towards ratification. Pelosi said at the time, "Unless you do this, we can't even consider it.”

At the event, Seade said Mexico had now fulfilled this obligation, noting, “The big thing for us was labor. We have delivered.”

On the heels of the vote, Trump made an appeal for ratification; however, according to various US media reports, top opposition legislators expressed continued reservations over ratification and called for more time to wait for Mexico to follow through on the labor overhaul.

Asked at the event whether he believed Democrats were stalling to deny Trump a political win ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Seade only acknowledged there is too much “gamesmanship” in play with the US ratification process - and said it would be “terrible for business” in the US to hold off on ratification in order to give Mexico the three or four years the government would need to begin showing results from the labor reforms.

Seade, furthermore, expressed frustration that the US had yet to act on the steel and aluminum tariffs that it placed on Mexico last year, as well as more recent actions on the imports of tomatoes and major delays at the border, which he said “are disrupting trade.”

Mexican negotiators managed to sidestep the issue with the US-Mexico trade deal struck last August by creating a side agreement that would ensure the country would be protected from US tariffs

In expressing disapproval of the tariffs, Seade said, “I have used the strongest language … We do have the conviction that we cannot possibly have the free trade agreement with tariffs,” adding that the stated rationale for the tariffs – national security – “is bogus.”

Looking ahead, the minister said he hopes for US ratification by July and added it would begin getting very uncomfortable if the ratification process was still in play beyond that date.