La Jornada: T-MEC for 10 years was not the product of bad negotiation: Sheinbaum

Morelia, Mich., After the United States ruled out expanding the Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC), which will remain in force for 10 more years, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo rejected that the above is a product of poor negotiation by her government and expressed that there is optimism in the review that is about to begin. To the country’s businessmen, he confirmed that “there is certainty for investment.”

Recalling that the annual reviews of the T-MEC were already planned from the moment it was signed, he explained that the first of them will be “very decisive” and anticipated that the subsequent ones will be a follow-up to the agreements that are agreed upon this year.

After meeting on Thursday at the National Palace with businessmen from the Manufacturing, Maquila and Export Services Industry (Immex) program, he explained that this meeting was already scheduled in advance. He explained that businessmen in these sectors requested improvements in the tax system to facilitate investments.

Meanwhile, the president took advantage of the dialogue with them to inform them about the review of the T-MEC. “It is very important because now there is criticism that there was supposedly bad negotiation with the United States, it is absolutely false,” he stressed in his daily press conference, held yesterday in Morelia.

He recalled that Canada, which will not expand this treaty either, “is even in conditions of even greater disadvantage than we have at this moment.”

He insisted that the decision not to continue with the treaty after 2036 is due to “a vision of the government in the United States of greater protectionism,” but in this period, he noted, the resolution could be made to extend it for 16 more years.

When the agreement was signed, it was defined that, if the expansion was not completed, there would be annual reviews starting in 2026 and until its conclusion in 2036, he added. “Our vision is that the first one is going to be very decisive and we are already very advanced. It is not that the conversations will start now, but that we have already been making progress for quite some time,” said the President.

“We are optimistic about the T-MEC and particularly about this review that is coming, and (we want) to tell all small, medium, large, national and foreign entrepreneurs that there is certainty to invest in Mexico, that the treaty is maintained and there is a good relationship in commercial matters with the United States government.”

He also stressed that the agri-food sector is not on the review table within the treaty, but acknowledged that the United States could raise it later.