Mexican And US Officials Meet To Discuss NAFTA

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

14 January 2008

United States and Mexican officials met last week to discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was fully implemented on January 1 of this year.

“NAFTA has been a positive force for our respective agricultural sectors, creating not only dramatic growth in two-way agricultural trade, but providing our farmers, ranchers and processors with the potential to take advantage of new export opportunities, while providing a clear and certain path to enhanced trade,” announced Mark E. Keenum, Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services of the US Department of Agriculture.

“The purpose of this meeting was to ensure that full implementation of NAFTA continues to move smoothly." he added.

Keenum and James M. Murphy, Assistant US Trade Representative for Agricultural Affairs, led the US delegation, and USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Bruce Knight and Under Secretary for Food Safety, Dr Richard Raymond, were members of the delegation.

”We noted that full elimination of all duties in our bilateral trade is a reason to celebrate and to look forward to more successes,” commented Murphy, continuing:

“We agreed we should not look backwards and risk all we have accomplished. At a time when we see rising prices for many commodities, open trade between Mexico and the United States also provides benefits for our consumers.”

The Mexican delegation was led by Under Secretary Beatriz Leycegui of the Ministry of the Economy (Economia) and Under Secretaries Jeffrey Jones and Francisco Lopez Tostado, both of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food Supply.

Canada and Mexico are the No. 1 and No. 2 export markets for US agriculture, respectively. In fiscal year 2007, two-way agricultural trade between the United States and Mexico was valued at a record $22.2 billion, a nearly fourfold increase over fiscal 1993—the year preceding the implementation of NAFTA—when two-way trade was valued at $6.4 billion.

In fiscal 2008, USDA predicts that two-way trade will continue to accelerate to $24 billion, an 8% increase.

With the full implementation of NAFTA, the final duties on a handful of agricultural commodities are now removed. These final commodities included US exports to Mexico of corn, dry edible beans, and nonfat dry milk, Mexican exports to the United States of certain horticultural products, and two-way sweetener trade.

Since 2005, the United States has invested nearly $20 million in programs and technical exchanges to assist Mexican producers in addressing production, distribution and marketing-related challenges.

“We will continue to work with Mexico on a broad range of cooperative activities and initiatives associated with the transition to full and open trade,” Keenum concluded.

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