U.S. Undersecretary for Labor visit to Mexico
April 4, 2022
Institutional Context
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed on November 30, 2018 and entered into force on July 1, 2020. This agreement is built on the basis of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The USMCA added trade provisions, for example, dispute resolution provisions and important commitments regarding labor and the environment. It also includes new sectors, such as the digital economy, and mechanisms to improve three-way cooperation to keep up with economic changes and global competition. The USMCA has the strongest and most far-reaching labor provisions of any trade agreement. The agreement contains a labor chapter (Chapter 23) that prioritizes labor obligations by including them in the core of the agreement and making them fully enforceable. This is a major change from NAFTA, which only contained a side agreement on labor.
U.S. Undersecretary for Labor visit to Mexico*
On April 4th, the Chief Officer for North America, Roberto Velasco, received the United States Undersecretary of Labor, Julie Su, and her team for a bilateral meeting. At the meeting, the delegations highlighted the binational broad agreement to guarantee labor rights in both countries, work for fairer and more equitable societies and, above all, deepen North American labor integration through the implementation of bilateral and trilateral mechanisms, such as the USMCA.
During the meeting, the delegations discussed the results of the work done to implement the labor reform in Mexico, as well as the progress achieved in the resolution of disputes through the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism of the USMCA. Deputy Secretary Su reaffirmed the Biden-Harris administration's commitment to increasing collaboration with the Government of Mexico and other stakeholders to create more legal avenues for temporary labor migration.
