U.S. agriculture is still waiting and pushing for USMCA to be brought up and passed in Congress.  Gregg Doud, the Chief Ag Negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said USMCA has passed a couple of important milestones, which should make it more attractive to lawmakers here in the U.S.

 

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“Mexico and its legislature have made changes to its labor laws which was kind of a prerequisite to this.  It’s passed their legislature and now has been signed into law.  The other one is the international trade commission study, which was released on April the 18th, and that was a big step forward in this process.  And I think it, quite frankly, surprised many of us, including myself.  I shows that USMCA will increase employment by 176,000 jobs.

 

And Doud noted, it will increase the U.S GDP by 0.35%, which he said would result in much better returns than other trade agreements.

 

“TPP that we all talk about only had a GDP increase of 0.15%.  So just these minor tweaks and changes we made in USMCA in regard to things like automobiles, etc. has more than double the impact on our economy then what we were doing overall in TPP.

 

 

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