En route to destroy USMCA – El Financiero

If we thought that the cancellation of the New Mexico City International Airport had been the decision that had caused the greatest patrimonial damage to the country since Santa Anna sold La Mesilla to the United States, we were wrong. There’s still more.

Two big lawsuits with our trade partners come with the start of next year, over corn and energy, which will put Mexico on the path of destruction of the T-MEC.

We are going to lose the dispute with the United States and Canada over the new electricity legislation, because it violates the T-MEC energy chapter, by giving priority to the state monopoly (CFE) to dispatch the expensive electricity it produces first, and relegating it to the last place in line to the cleaner and cheaper ones produced by the private sector.

We are also going to lose the dispute over yellow corn, for animal consumption, which is genetically modified (GMO), because prohibiting its importation violates the T-MEC market access chapter, since there is no scientific evidence to prove any harm to health.

Foreign Minister Ebrard warned, at the beginning of the complaints from our partners for the violation of the trilateral agreement that the electricity legislation implied, that it was essential to avoid the dispute resolution panel.

Going to a panel implies sanctions to the country.

On the same day as the visit of the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States, Tom Vilsack, who warned of the risk of “substantially interrupting trade” with the decree that prohibits the importation of GMO corn, the president of Mexico responded that “we will not give in to USA. If there is no agreement, they can go to a panel.”

With the penalties stemming from each panel, plus the reparations to those who spent their money to produce energy in Mexico, and to the corn growers in Iowa, it would be an economic catastrophe.

If they lose, as would obviously happen, investors must be paid everything they planned to earn with their investments made under the protection of a trilateral agreement signed and ratified by the Mexican government.

It is, obviously, the end of NAFTA, now modified as T-MEC.

Those who view these decisions by the Mexican government with a critical eye maintain that it is an ideological issue that permeates the actions of our leaders.

They are very generous in looking at ideological content where there is only nonsense.

What ideology is there in shouting “without corn there is no country”? It is a hollow slogan that says absolutely nothing.

Foolishness, as explained in the edition on line On Saturday, the director of the Economy of EL FINANCIERO, Víctor Piz: Mexico imports 16 million tons of yellow corn a year, which the United States sells at a subsidized price, and in our country it is used to fatten cattle whose meat is exported at discount prices. international market.

A round deal for Mexico, which we are going to let go from 2024 when imports are prohibited, because “without corn there is no country.”

As Piz quotes in her Saturday text, Mary Ng, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Trade, reminded our secretary Raquel Buenrostro “of the importance of following science-based regulatory approaches to biotechnology approval.”

In other words, the government of Mexico: what are your scientific bases for putting barriers to GMO corn?

If there are, go ahead. But the answer is “without corn there is no country”. A slogan that only needs to be added “unga unga”.

Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, senators from Iowa, made the formal request to initiate the dispute process with Mexico on this issue. And there commercial affairs are the responsibility of Congress.

The lawsuit for the dispatch of electricity is even more painful. Mexico opened the generation of electrical energy to private investment. Clean electricity, cheaper than traditional. It was embodied in the trilateral treaty, with the support of the current government.

Investments are coming in energy, and also from industries that thus had guaranteed access to lower cost and clean electricity, as many international standards now require from companies and development banks for their loans.

Once in power, the new Mexican government, which had ratified the T-MEC energy chapter with praise, changed the rules of the game to hinder private investment in clean energy. All down.

The reason? “We are no longer hostages to neoliberals.”

If that’s what our rulers think, go ahead, they have the power, but don’t sign international agreements that you won’t comply with, because there are consequences and sanctions.

The Mexican economy, lagging behind our peers, is based on three pillars: exports, remittances and tourism.

Tourism is the work of nature and of the governments that invested in developing and promoting it.

Exports is the product of the Treaty with the United States and Canada, which was made by a “neoliberal” government headed by an “unnameable”.

Remittances, merit of the current government, which quickly reversed what was achieved two six-year terms ago by another “unmentionable” president: more Mexicans returned to Mexico than emigrated.

If we persevere on the path we are going, what follows is the end of the T-MEC.

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