The US cannot be competitive without Mexico and Canada, says Sheinbaum

In contrast to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994, the foreign direct investment that has arrived with the Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC) does generate productive chains in the country, said President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, and stressed that Only with this trade agreement and with this alliance can we compete with other regions of the world.

He stressed that The United States cannot do it alone; necessarily requires Canada and Mexico.

Looking ahead to the scheduled review of the T-MEC next year, the president trusted that there will be no setbacks. A minor revision is coming in 2026. We believe that it will be in agreement with the governments of the United States and Canada, because the treaty has been beneficial for the three countries.he stated yesterday.

When addressing the issue in his morning press conference, he was asked about the relevance of joining the countries that make up the BRICS bloc. In response, Sheinbaum highlighted the advantages that the T-MEC has had for Mexico and its two trading partners.

Mexico, he explained, practically doubled its exports to the United States from 2018 to 2024 thanks to the treaty. Therefore, it is essential for our countries to strengthen this scheme with sovereigntyhe pointed out, and then clarified that That does not mean that we do not have trade agreements with other countries; we can have them. We are working, for example, with Europe on the trade agreement that already existed, because its renewal process necessarily comes..

He also insisted on the integration of the entire continent to generate a larger economic bloc.

When differentiating the current treaty from NAFTA, he explained that The 1994 treaty, in addition to being linked to all the guidelines of international financial organizations so that Mexico had a neoliberal development model, had a central element, which was to use Mexico with a competitive advantage: cheap labor. And that did a lot of damage to the country because it was the period in which the minimum wage did not grow..

The substantive difference, he added, is that the regime in Mexico changed, and it is no longer integration losing sovereignty, which was what existed before. Likewise, he noted, Plan Mexico will allow the recovery of production chains that were lost in the neoliberal period.