Texas agricultural producers should not have to pay the price for Washington, D.C.’s broken diplomatic relationships. Last March, the United States Congress unilaterally suspended part of the NAFTA agreement that went into effect allowing Mexican operated trucks to go further into the United States. It has been widely reported this was in response to union complaints.
There are protocols within NAFTA to address legitimate issues, but what our Democratic leaders in Congress did was bypass these mutually agreed upon guidelines. The result: American farmers, ranchers, companies and employees have been paying the price. That’s correct; Mexico has the ability to add tariffs to U.S. products because our federal government did not play by the rules they agreed to operate by.
This is costing U.S. jobs. We should never be cavalier about what we agreed to do, because this only limits our credibility and hurts the unemployed Americans who are waiting for this economy to rebound.
We sometimes forget that Mexico is one of our largest agricultural trading partners. In fact, according to Census Bureau data, the U.S. shipped more than $1 billion worth of fruits, vegetables and nuts to Mexico in 2009, up 45 percent from $748 million in 2005. Mexico is one of our biggest customers here in America. Texas is a big producer and exporter in multiple categories, and this tariff hits many of our grapefruit, orange, onion and peanut growers. Texas happens to rank 2nd in grapefruit production, 3rd in oranges, 4th in onions and 2nd in peanuts, so you can imagine how our economy is going to feel the pain.
Mr. President, here is a stimulus package that doesn’t add to our meteoric debt calendar: instruct our trade negotiators to work this problem out immediately, and help our economy and U.S. workers! Our Democratic Congressional leaders started this problem, and they can do something about it.
