The Trump administration said Monday that officials sent to Mexico to monitor labor compliance as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade would not have unilateral authority to inspect factories, an attempt to allay Mexican fears.
Mexico expressed satisfaction with the clarification, but it was unclear how Democrats and unions, which pushed for inspections, would react.
Mexico had vigorously objected to the apparent inclusion of inspectors in the implementing language of USMCA, arguing they were a violation of its national sovereignty. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office clarified Monday that independent panels jointly appointed by the U.S. and Mexico would monitor compliance with the trade deal, which would replace 1993’s NAFTA.
The USMCA calls for up to five attachés from the Department of Labor to work with Mexican officials, the USTR said, but, “These personnel will not be ‘labor inspectors’ and will abide by all relevant Mexican laws.”
The USTR said that “verifications will be conducted by the independent panelists, not by the labor attachés.” The role of the attaches would be “to work with their Mexican counterparts, workers, and civil society groups on implementation of the Mexican labor reform.”
Mexico Deputy Foreign Minister Jesus Seade, the country’s lead negotiator, told reporters Monday that the response “absolutely” satisfies Mexico’s concerns, according to Reuters.
The Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to mark up the trade deal Tuesday, which would allow a full House vote.
The inspection language was one of the main obstacles to USMCA’s passage prior to the announcement last week that paved the way for it to clear the Democrat-controlled House. Democrats insisted that Mexican factories be closely monitored to ensure that the country adheres to the deal’s labor rights language, holding up passage for months.
The provision was a controversial issue in Mexico. A report earlier this month in the newspaper El Universal alleging that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration agreed to inspections went viral and was disputed by Mexican officials, including Seade.
The eventual deal created a multipart monitoring system that was intended to serve as a compromise. Mexican Senator Jose Narro Cespedes, who was part of the negotiations and would have oversight of the inspections for his country, told the Washington Examiner that it was his understanding that factory monitoring would be done by three-member panels. Mexico would choose one person, the U.S. the second, and both countries would jointly pick a third.
“There are no inspections,” Narro Cespedes said, speaking through an interpreter. “The only thing that was not agreed upon was where the third person come from. Mexico was suggesting the person come from the International Labour Organization,” a United Nations agency.
Complaints of labor rights violations would be made by individual workers to the commissions, Narro Cespedes said, and the process would apply to all countries party to USMCA. “So, for example, a Mexican farm worker being abused in the field of California could make a complaint,” the senator said.
The final version of the deal’s labor rights language won AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s support, a tipping point in getting Democratic backing for USMCA. Many lawmakers feared that unions would abandon them in primary elections otherwise.
However, the U.S. version of implementing language stated that the U.S. would hire up to five-time Labor Department employees who would be stationed at the embassies to assist the panels to “monitor and enforce the labor obligations of Mexico.”
Mexico claimed to have been blindsided by the language. Seade said in a tweet Sunday that, while the Labor Department hires had been “contemplated,” no agreement had been made. “Mexico will NEVER accept if it is in any measure of disguised inspectors for a simple reason: Mexican law prohibits it.”
