U.S. industry groups strongly back renewing CUSMA
CBC
As Canada’s trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico faces a crucial review, many U.S. industries are urging the Trump administration to preserve the agreement and to stop putting tariffs on imports from its northern and southern neighbours.
Public hearings are scheduled this week in Washington as part of a mandatory review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Ahead of the hearings, some of the heaviest hitters in the U.S. manufacturing, industrial and retail sectors have submitted briefs extolling the agreement’s benefits to the domestic economy and praising U.S. President Donald Trump for having landed the trade deal during his first term.
While there are calls for amendments among the roughly 1,500 public comments submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the three-way agreement gets widespread, even enthusiastic support from major industry groups.
CUSMA is "the most pro-U.S. manufacturing trade agreement in history,” gushes the submission from the National Association of Manufacturers, the largest organization in a sector that contributes $2.9 trillion US to the nation’s GDP.
The deal has "boosted manufacturing in the U.S. to unparalleled levels,” it says, calling CUSMA a "core driver” of the domestic industry’s global competitiveness.
The manufacturers' group describes the trade deal as a "key part" of Trump’s agenda of boosting factory production in the U.S.
"And it has delivered results."
Julian Karaguesian, an international trade expert who read through a sample of 50 submissions, tells CBC News that their overall tone broadly favours keeping the agreement intact.
"It's very careful and polite, but it's overwhelmingly in support of, or asking for renewal of CUSMA, with as much elimination of tariffs as possible," said Karaguesian, formerly a special adviser on international trade with Canada’s Department of Finance, now a visiting lecturer in economics at McGill University in Montreal.
Karaguesian says industry groups are making the case to the Trump administration that Canadian and Mexican supplies are integral to their operations and that the two countries’ markets are important to the success of their businesses.
"The government of Canada has hundreds of small-, medium- and large-scale private sector allies," he said.
Some submissions, most notably from the U.S. steel and dairy sectors, are critical of the impact of CUSMA.
But plaudits for the trade deal — and for scrapping the tariffs that Trump has imposed on Canadian goods — come from a wide range of major industries.
