[CTC] Labor & Civil Society Groups Detail Shared Priorities for the USMCA Review

[Arthur Stamoulis]

*Thank you to everyone who worked on the USMCA letter below!  It just went
into USTR this morning with 683-strong organizational signers.  Please *
amplify
<https://x.com/citizenstrade/status/1933155590248759357?t=SGwTWFaDiAnaS977UXBCfg&s=19>*!
And attend Thursday’s 3pm ET *Trade Justice Power Hour
<https://tradejusticeedfund.org/events/changes-needed-for-usmca-review-to-deliver-benefits-to-working-people-and-the-planet/>*
if
you’d like to participate in in-district field deliveries over the coming
weeks. --Arthur*


*Retweet here*
<https://x.com/citizenstrade/status/1933155590248759357?t=SGwTWFaDiAnaS977UXBCfg&s=19>

For Immediate Release
Contact: Arthur Stamoulis, (202) 494-8826 or arthur at citizenstrade.org

*Labor & Civil Society Groups Detail Shared Priorities for the USMCA Review*
*683 Orgs Send Joint Letter to USTR Greer on Changes Needed for
Trump’s North American Trade Deal to Benefit Working People*

Washington, D.C. — As the mandatory, six-year review of the
U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal approaches, hundreds of
labor and civil society organizations across the United States wrote to the
Trump administration today with shared views on the significant changes
needed for the pact to benefit working families and communities.

“Good-paying jobs continue to pour out of the United States under President
Trump’s USMCA trade deal,” said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of
Citizens Trade Campaign, the coalition of labor, environmental, family
farm, faith and consumer organizations that organized the letter.  “The
upcoming USMCA review is a chance to fix the USMCA’s significant problems
or to get out of the pact altogether.”

The USMCA is President Donald J. Trump’s revised version of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) from his first term in office.  At
the time, Trump called the USMCA “the greatest trade deal ever,” but the
U.S. trade deficit has increased under the USMCA relative to the original
NAFTA.

The USMCA contains provisions requiring the three governments to review the
pact at six years, and which point countries can suggest possible
amendments to the agreement.  Chapter-specific reviews of the labor and
environment chapter are to take place during the fifth year of the
agreement, which begins on July 1.

The 683-group letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer details
changes needed to those and other chapters of the USMCA in order to end the
offshoring of good-paying jobs; raise wages across the region; strengthen
rural communities; address root causes of migration and displacement; stop
abuses by Big Tech; shut down special rights for foreign investors; and
make medicine more affordable.

The letter also urges the nation’s top trade official to adopt a
transparent and participatory process for the USMCA review.

Signers on the letter include the American Federation of Teachers, American
Sustainable Business Network, Communications Workers of America,
International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, League of
Conservation Voters, National Consumers League, National Family Farm
Coalition, National Organization for Women, Public Citizen, Sierra Club,
Trade Justice Education Fund, United Auto Workers (UAW), United Church of
Christ, United Steelworkers (USW) and hundreds of others.

A PDF with the complete list of signers is available here
<https://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/USMCAReview_OrgSignOnLetter_061225.pdf>
and
the text of the letter is below:

*Dear U.S. Trade Representative Greer: *


*As the mandatory, once-every-six-years review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA) approaches, our organizations are painfully aware that
the 2020 revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has not
delivered its promised gains for American workers, family farmers and
communities nationwide. *


*A successful USMCA review process must result in significant changes to
the agreement so that it benefits working families and contributes to the
development of a resilient and fair economy in the United States and across
North America.  If these needed changes cannot be secured, the United
States should not only refuse to extend the agreement’s term beyond its
current 2036 expiration, but should instead withdraw from the USMCA
altogether.*


*At the time of the USMCA’s establishment, President Trump told the nation
that the pact would bring “jobs pouring into the United States,” be “an
especially great victory for our farmers,” and provide other concrete
benefits to the American people.  Instead, the U.S. trade deficit with
Mexico and Canada has skyrocketed under the USMCA; corporations continue to
offshore good-paying American jobs to Mexico where workers’ labor rights
are still violated and wages remain a pittance; and vital American economic
sectors from autos to steel to aerospace to agriculture are being
undermined by surging USMCA imports.*


*In our view, a successful USMCA review process must result in
renegotiation of key terms to:*


*·      End the offshoring of good-paying jobs.  Under the USMCA, companies
continue to offshore good-paying jobs from the United States to Mexico to
take advantage of weak labor rights, low wages and lax pollution
controls.  To end such offshoring, existing USMCA labor and environmental
provisions must be strengthened, expanded and their enforcement
improved.  This includes strengthening and broadening the application of
the agreement’s innovative rapid response mechanism, which has proven to be
an effective tool for holding companies accountable for failing to respect
workers’ rights.  With respect to climate and the environment, new
commitments to reduce emissions from the industrial sector and to ensure
data transparency in pollution intensity of major energy-intensive products
including steel and aluminum are likewise needed; facility-specific
enforcement tools similar to those for labor must also be added for
existing and strengthened environmental standards.  The Regional Value
Content (RCV) of the USMCA’s Rules of Origin (ROO) must also be
strengthened to ensure that the parts going into goods assembled in North
America, such as cars, airplanes, wind turbines and computers, are
increasingly made in North America, rather than coming from other
countries.  To prevent circumvention of strengthened USMCA labor and
environmental standards, Most Favored Nation tariff rates for key
industrial products must also be increased — ideally on a trilateral
basis.  To ensure that local tax dollars can be recirculated to create jobs
at home, the renegotiation must also end USMCA requirements that waive “Buy
American” and other domestic government purchasing preferences, which also
will require the three USMCA partners to adjust their procurement
commitments at the World Trade Organization (WTO).*


*·      Raise wages across the region.  There is zero evidence the USMCA
has meaningfully increased wages for working people in the United States,
Mexico or Canada.  The most straightforward way to address this problem is
for the renegotiated agreement to condition application of the agreement’s
benefits to goods and services produced by workers making a fair wage and
to require better supply chain transparency, including tracking of the
wages associated with exported goods and services.  The parties should
establish a North American minimum wage for manufacturing workers in key
sectors, premised on workers getting equal pay for equal work.  Coordinated
trilateral increases in key MFN tariffs will also create the basis for a
higher wage North American production bloc.  By raising wages in Mexico,
not only can Mexican workers start to purchase the goods they produce and
U.S. and Canadian exports, but companies will have less of an incentive to
move jobs there to take advantage of lower wages.*


*·      Strengthen rural communities.  Agribusiness interests continue to
reap huge profits under the USMCA, while family farmers and working people
in rural communities suffer.  While the prices consumers pay at the
supermarket are higher than ever, the prices paid to farmers in all three
countries are often below their costs of production.  To strengthen rural
economies, the USMCA must be renegotiated to create fair, stable prices for
independent family farmers and require mandatory market transparency so
that consumers know where their food is coming from and how it is
produced.  This includes safeguarding governments’ rights to manage
agricultural supplies at fair prices that at least cover farmers’ costs of
production and through tariff protections that allow for stable domestic
supplies that meet demand by discouraging dumping.  A renegotiated USMCA
must also establish mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) rules for
beef, pork, dairy, egg and seafood products.*


*·      Address root causes of migration and displacement.  Agricultural
dumping by agribusiness, fueled by the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), drove millions of small farmers in Mexico off their land, with
many having no other options but to migrate northward — an injustice that
the USMCA has not even attempted to resolve.  Worker exploitation and
environmental degradation in Mexico driven by unfair trade practices have
also led many to leave their homes in search of a better life.  Rather than
demonize immigrants or blame Mexico for this migration, the USMCA
renegotiation must instead help address these root causes of economic
displacement by strengthening opportunities for workers and farmers to earn
secure livelihoods at home, while also better protecting migrant workers
via strengthened labor provisions.*


*·      Stop abuses by Big Tech.  The USMCA was the first major U.S. trade
agreement to include extreme “digital trade” provisions that help Big Tech
undermine online privacy, data security, AI accountability and
anti-monopoly policies.  When trade deals enable our personal data to be
shipped around the globe without regard to privacy and data security
standards, data processing, data storage and other data-driven jobs
inevitably get shipped abroad to low-wage nations.  The USMCA also contains
algorithm and source code secrecy guarantees that gut right to repair
policies and prevent effective oversight of Artificial Intelligence (AI),
needlessly exposing workers to discriminatory, unsafe and otherwise harmful
uses of AI in the workplace.  These and other Big Tech giveaways need to be
eliminated.*


*·      Shut down special rights for foreign investors.  To further benefit
working families and create a fairer economy, the USMCA must be
renegotiated to strip provisions that constrain regulation of foreign
investors and other provisions that undermine industrial and public
interest policies.  This includes completely eliminating Investor-State
Dispute Settlement (ISDS) and removing so-called Good Regulatory Practices
(GRP) provisions that help corporations delay, weaken and derail public
interest policies.  *


*·      Make medicine more affordable.  The USMCA renegotiation should also
take proactive steps to build stronger, more-resilient supply chains for
medical devices, personal protective equipment and affordable
medicines.  Existing USMCA provisions that privilege pharmaceutical
monopolies over access to affordable medicine must be eliminated, including
especially “TRIPS-plus” provisions that establish special rights for
pharmaceutical monopolies.  Provisions affirming governments’ right to use
compulsory licensing to address public health needs and to negotiate for
lower prescription medicine prices should also be added.  *


*We look forward to being resources to you and your staff on these and
other issues throughout the USMCA review and renegotiation process. Toward
that end, we urge you to please release U.S. USMCA amendment proposals for
public comment before tabling them and to publish any composite
renegotiation texts between countries in near real-time.*


*Sincerely,*


*[LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS]*


###

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826
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