This article by Manuel Pérez-Rocha originally appeared in the November 17, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Mexico Solidarity Media*, or the Mexico Solidarity Project.*
Yesterday, Sunday, a Mexican delegation arrived in Washington, D.C., comprised of social activists and members of social and civil organizations. In a trinational alliance, they will present to Congress and the public what is needed for the upcoming review of the USMCA. A vision beyond the reductionist, productivist, one-dimensional perspective characteristic of neoliberalism—and sadly prevalent in the Mexican government’s position, which insists that “the treaty (USMCA) helps all three economies” —is welcome.
Beyond the obsession with exporting “our” goods and strengthening “our production chains” (says [Mexico’s Secretary of Economy] Ebrard), the visit of the Mexican delegation to Washington, Tania del Moral, coordinator of the tour for the organization Global Exchange, tells me, “is part of the historical struggle against trade policies that have worsened forced migration, increased wealth inequality, facilitated corporate extractivism and violated the human rights and territories of Indigenous peoples.”
For decades, civil society organizations in the three countries have worked to overcome the dogma of maintaining “value chains” (the question is, who ultimately captures that value?), of defending “our exports” (concentrated by transnational corporations), and of attracting foreign investment without performance requirements (which are prohibited in free trade agreements). It is more urgent than ever to understand and address the threat posed by the powerful interests of transnational capital since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994. Now, with the USMCA, which, although it has a different name and some modifications, still represents a threat to our national sovereignty and the self-determination of our peoples.
The United States intends to intensify and deepen the USMCA to satisfy the rapacity and mendacity of the US plutocracy in collusion with the narrow Mexican business elite willing to sell off all possible assets and hand over the country’s natural resources to the highest bidder.
Consultations with productive sectors regarding the supposed export opportunities represented by the USMCA are biased, since it is not only a free trade agreement for goods and services, but a wide variety of agreements that undermine the regulatory capacity of the State in favor of the interests of large extractive, agro-industrial, financial, automotive, big-tech and other manufacturing and service corporations.
It should not go unnoticed, as it seems to be, that a group of CEOs from powerful US companies, including General Motors, United Airlines, JP Morgan Chase, Apple, FedEx, and Walmart, are asking Trump to fully reinstate the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system as it existed under Chapter 11 of NAFTA. It’s important to remember that with the USMCA, ISDS—which allows companies to sue states directly in supranational tribunals, such as the World Bank’s ICSID—has been eliminated between the United States and Canada, and limited between Mexico and the United States to companies with government contracts in the hydrocarbons sector.
The CEOs’ call to reinstate the neocolonial “security” system for their investments comes within the context of a letter from the Business Roundtable—an organization of more than 200 of the largest US corporations—to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). The letter includes a complaint that “Mexico has adopted a series of measures in recent years, particularly in strategic sectors such as energy, telecommunications, and aviation, that benefit its state-owned or national companies.” The letter continues, stating that the USTR “should insist that Mexico end its discrimination against US companies in favor of its state-owned or national companies.” The list of demands to further open the country to their interests is extensive.
It is unacceptable to Mexico that the CEOs of the aforementioned companies are interfering against Mexico’s recent judicial reforms. They argue that these reforms “will cool the investment climate in Mexico and subject disputes between investors and the government to political considerations rather than the rule of law.” The Business Roundtable complains that “in the last five years, Mexico has taken several troubling measures that have negatively affected U.S. investments in the country, such as the expropriation of a quarry owned by a U.S. company.” This refers precisely to the mining company Legacy Vulcan LLC, owner of Calica, the polluting mine near Playa del Carmen (see La Jornada, November 25, 2003).
Let’s be alert! I have no doubt that the United States’ intentions will go far beyond maintaining the status quo, and not just to undo the USMCA as Trump threatens, but to intensify and deepen it to satisfy the rapacity and mendacity of the US plutocracy in collusion with the narrow Mexican business elite willing, under the remnants of Salinas’ neoliberalism, to sell off all possible assets and hand over the country’s natural resources to the highest bidder.
Welcome to Washington, the Mexican delegation of human rights activists and supporters of the Mexican people. The current administration should accompany them and welcome them back to Mexico as a demonstration of its commitment to fair trade with democracy! They are traveling from Quintana Roo to Chihuahua, including defenders of corn, members of the People’s Movement for Peace and Justice, and other human rights defenders. They bring with them the Joint Declaration of the National Meeting: Advocacy Assembly on the USMCA.
I would like to highlight, from among the assembly’s working groups (which include labor rights, agriculture, human security, and peace), a proposal from the environmental working group, as it pertains to this article: to promote “the complete elimination of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, as the United States and Canada have already done between themselves in the USMCA.” Not one step back; enough of granting privileges to foreign investment.
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