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ISSA Expresses Support for U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement
July 25, 2019On July 23, ISSA signed onto a coalition letter with more than 600 business groups in support of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The letter, which was sent to members of the U.S. Congress, included signatures from the American Cleaning Institute, Household & Commercial Products Association, National Association of Chemical Distributors, National Association of Manufacturers, National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, and the National Small Business Association, and many more allies argues that USMCA would “ensure U.S. manufacturers, farmers, and service providers can continue to access the Canadian and Mexican markets.”
USMCA would update the North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA), which is the current trade deal in effect. The updated agreement aims to “rebalance” NAFTA to “improve U.S. opportunities to trade with Canada and Mexico.” It addresses the need for modernization with “new protections for U.S. intellectual property, ensuring opportunities for trade in U.S. services, new chapters covering digital trade, anticorruption, and good regulatory practices, as well as a chapter devoted to ensuring that Small and medium-sized enterprises,” whose “top two export destinations are Mexico and Canada,” “benefit from the agreement.” At the same time, USMCA would not lose the key NAFTA tenant that “guarantees that virtually all U.S. exports [would] enter [Canada and Mexico] tariff-free.”
The letter emphasizes the dependence of American jobs on trade with Canada and Mexico. It states that “U.S. manufacturers export more made-in-America manufactured goods to our North American neighbors than they do to the next 11 largest export markets combined.”
The document also highlights the competitive advantage that the agreement would promote. It asserts that USMCA will “create a level playing field for trade in North America” by “helping U.S. companies and the workers they employ compete.”
As a member of the Americans for Free Trade coalition, ISSA supports fair trade practices that facilitate the movement of goods throughout our industry and the entire economy.
For additional information about this issue or if you have questions regarding ISSA’s advocacy efforts, please contact ISSA Director of Government Affairs John Nothdurft at [email protected].