The language of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement says that in order for the treaty to take effect on June 1 -- as U.S. officials have told Congress they want -- the countries would have to agree that they're ready 12 days from now. Kenneth Smith Ramos, a former top negotiator of the NAFTA rewrite, said the three countries cannot say they've completed their internal procedures by then. “#NotHappening,” he wrote in English at the end of a tweet in Spanish.
The auto industry publicly asked the Trump administration not to rush into certifying readiness for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement's entry into force, given the fact that “a global pandemic is significantly disrupting our supply chains, and the industry is throwing all available resources into managing production through this crisis for our employees and for the broader U.S. economy.”
Canada's House of Commons approved the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement -- called CUSMA in Canada -- by unanimous consent March 13, before adjourning until April 20 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Canadian Senate passed it less than an hour later. Royal Assent, the equivalent of a presidential signature in the U.S., followed shortly, and the Senate adjourned as well. Now, all three countries must continue to work on uniform regulations so that they can certify the treaty is ready to enter into force. Efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 may slow that process, because the countries also have to evaluate the progress toward fulfilling commitments, such as setting up labor courts in Mexico and getting new rules of origin processes in place. Once that certification is issued, NAFTA will be replaced on the first day of the third month after the announcement.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects China to begin fulfilling portions of its agricultural purchase commitments by the end of this summer, Secretary Sonny Perdue said during a March 4 House hearing. Although the coronavirus outbreak has delayed the purchase commitments under the phase one trade deal (see 2001150073) and thrown global agricultural trade into uncertainty, Perdue said the USDA has received “signals” that China intends to fully comply with the purchase agreements (see 2002250055). “We believe that China is a shrewd customer. They’re going to buy where the best deal is,” Perdue told the House Agriculture Committee. “We think they’ll come into this market in late spring and summer and fulfill the commitments.”
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The Canadian Parliament is moving the successor to NAFTA along, so that a March ratification vote is still looking likely, news from Canada says. While the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement will be reviewed by the agriculture, natural resources and industry/science/technology committees, not just the trade committee, the other committees only have until Feb. 25 for that review, a report from ipolitics said.
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The legislative process for U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement approval “has just started in Canada” and the final ratification is expected to occur in March, said Joy Nott, a partner in KPMG's Canada Indirect Tax Practice, during a Feb. 5 webinar. “If it does happen at any point in the month of March,” the agreement would then come into force in July (see 2001300009), she said. “The one thing that is sort of up in the air is -- in Canada, it goes through a debate period, and we're not expecting any undue delays or whatever else, but like all politics, there is a debate period that as long as the debate is going on, it could drag the ratification into April,” she said. Still, ratification in March seems likely, she said.
The many complicated “provisions” for implementing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade plausibly means July 1 is the “absolute earliest” date it can “enter into force,” Nicole Bivens Collinson, international trade expert with Sandler, Travis, told a Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar Jan. 29. President Donald Trump signed USMCA’s enabling legislation into law on Jan. 29 (see 2001290035), saying the agreement “contains critical protections for intellectual property, including trade secrets, digital services and financial services.”
President Donald Trump, in a signing ceremony Jan. 29, said he would be ending the devastation that NAFTA brought and said that its replacement will strengthen what he called the country's blue-collar boom, “delivering massive gains for the loyal citizens of our nation.” Democrats, who were not invited to the White House ceremony, during their own press conferences ahead of the signing, emphasized how much they'd changed what the president submitted to them, by strengthening labor enforcement and environmental provisions, and removing patent protections for certain kinds of prescription drugs.