New North American trade deal launches under growing threat of disputes

The revamped trade pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico taking effect on Wednesday was meant to create a kind of fortress North America, boosting the region's competitiveness - but cracks are already starting to show in the foundation.

As the deal kicks in, the Trump administration is threatening Canada with new aluminum tariffs, and a prominent Mexican labor activist has been jailed, underscoring concerns about crucial labor reforms in the replacement for the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement. The risk of disputes among the three trading partners is growing, analysts say.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement includes tighter North American content rules for autos, new protections for intellectual property, prohibitions against currency manipulation and new rules on digital commerce that did not exist when NAFTA launched in 1994, an agreement U.S. President Donald Trump has lambasted as the "worst trade deal ever made."

The coronavirus has all three countries mired in a deep recession, cutting their April goods trade flows - normally about $1.2 trillion annually - to the lowest monthly level in a decade.

"The champagne isn't quite as fizzy as we might have expected - even under the best of circumstances - and there's trouble coming from all sides," said Mary Lovely, a Syracuse University economics professor and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. "This could be a trade agreement that quickly ends up in dispute and higher trade barriers."

Issues dogging USMCA include hundreds of legal challenges to Mexico's new labor law championed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to ensure that workers can freely organize and unions are granted full collective bargaining rights.

A ruling against it would harm Mexico's ability to deliver on provisions aimed at ending labor contracts agreed without worker consent that are stacked in favor of companies and have kept wages chronically low in Mexico.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress had insisted on the stronger labor provisions last year before granting approval, prompting a substantial renegotiation of terms first agreed in October 2018.

The arrest of Mexican labor lawyer Susana Prieto in early June has fueled U.S. unions' arguments that Mexican workers' rights are not being sufficiently protected.
"I remain very concerned that Mexico is falling short of its commitments to implement the legislative reforms that are the foundation in Mexico for effectively protecting labor rights," U.S. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on Tuesday, adding that USMCA's success "truly hinges" on its new labor enforcement mechanism.