USMCA Review Should Be Leverage Against Cuba, China, HFAC Members Say
House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere Chairwoman Maria Elena Salazar, R-Fla., asked a State Department official to press Mexico to stop accepting Cuban doctors' services, which she says is human trafficking. Salazar held a hearing on Mexico's relationship with its neighbors this week in the subcommittee.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Salazar says that employing the Cuban doctors is contrary to language in USMCA that says each country will not use forced labor, because 95% of their wages go to the Cuban government.
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Katherine Dueholm replied, "We agree with you entirely. It's very cynical how the Cuban government has been able to dress up a trafficking in persons program as a noble gesture for a fee, to governments for medical services."
With respect to USMCA, Dueholm said, that's the purview of the U.S. Trade Representative, "But I will say that we continue to raise this issue at all levels of the Mexican government. The secretary has raised it," she said, and so has she.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., argued that Trump's tariffs on Mexican goods that were once duty-free is "sticking a fork in the eye of our friends."
Stanton said that Mexico manufactures power and data cables the U.S. needs for data centers. "They're interested in building out a North American semiconductor ecosystem and they're perfectly situated for nearshoring," he said. "In short, a strong U.S.- Mexico relationship is critical to winning the economic competition with China." But he said the administration is "throwing doubt" on the future of USMCA.
"If we want a predictable, secure supply chains that diversify away from China, we have to get this review right. Business leaders in my home state of Arizona that I've spoken to want a trilateral agreement that ends tariffs on USMCA-compliant goods, develops secure supply chains to break China's dominance of the critical minerals and active pharmaceutical ingredients, and deters transshipment, when bad actors try to misrepresent a good's true country of origin."
Dueholm said the review will aim "to get at exactly the issues you just raised, to help ensure reliable supply chains and to help keep out third-country actors who seek to exploit those.
She noted that Mexico passed Plan Mexico and hiked tariffs on products from countries that it doesn't have a free-trade agreement with, including China, which is a step toward stemming Chinese participation in Mexican supply chains.
She said the State Department is also working "with Mexico to put in place an investment screening mechanism to help ensure that China and other countries do not get into their critical infrastructure."