[CTC] Fwd: IUST: Rep. Sánchez: Trump using trade policy to advance 'xenophobic' agenda

[Arthur Stamoulis]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Melinda St. Louis <mstlouis at citizen.org>
Date: Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Subject: IUST: Rep. Sánchez: Trump using trade policy to advance
'xenophobic' agenda
To: arthur at citizenstrade.org <arthur at citizenstrade.org>


Hi Arthur – can you share this with the CTC field list?



I wanted to flag this new report by Public Citizen and National Partnership
for New Americans: Exporting Instability, Importing Exploitation: The
Impacts of U.S. Trade Policy on Migration in Latin America.
<https://gtwaction.org/exporting-instability-importing-exploitation/> At
the heart of Donald Trump’s increasingly vicious crackdown on immigrants is
the dangerous lie that they are to blame for working people’s frustrations.
This new report shows that, in fact, working people at home and abroad have
suffered from “free trade” policies –which Trump claims to hate but has no
intention of fixing –and that our broken immigration system facilitates
exploitation of migrants forced from their homes when they seek refuge in
the United States.



   - *Read
   <https://gtwaction.org/exporting-instability-importing-exploitation/> and
   share the report on social media*: X
   <https://x.com/PCGTW/status/1938321891422261631>. BSKY
   <https://bsky.app/profile/pcgtw.bsky.social/post/3lsjuzgvma22b>, Threads
   <https://www.threads.com/@pcglobaltradewatch/post/DLYGUGsyr8g?xmt=AQF0rnsTAr1qxwxFwhoqI3e86n__HB13fmEC1bnkdgUUrQ>,
   Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16dXPwK4HY/>, Instagram
   <https://www.instagram.com/p/DLYGTkRS1Er/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link>
   (coverage in Inside US Trade below)
   - *Watch the recording of the report launch event
   <https://www.citizen.org/news/new-report-how-u-s-trade-policy-fuels-mass-migration-and-worker-exploitation/>,*
   featuring Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Iza
   Camarillo (Public Citizen), Nicole Melaku (National Partnership for New
   Americans), Chris Zatratz of the United Auto Workers, and Yunuen Trujillo
   of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) -





*Inside U.S. Trade* -
https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/rep-s-nchez-trump-using-trade-policy-advance-xenophobic-agenda



*Rep. Sánchez: Trump using trade policy to advance 'xenophobic' agenda*

By Hannah Monicken | June 26, 2025



The Trump administration's approach to trade policy goes hand in hand with
its hardline approach to immigration, the top Democrat on the House Ways &
Means trade subcommittee argued on Thursday, citing trade actions that
exploit workers -- both in the U.S. and abroad -- and exacerbate migration.

During a webinar hosted by advocacy group Public Citizen that was centered
on *a new report
<https://www.citizen.org/article/exporting-instability-importing-exploitation/>*
on
trade and migration, Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA) criticized President Trump’s
use of tariffs to “shake down” trading partners and advocated for a “new
chapter in our trade policy.” She accused Trump of weaponizing tariffs in
favor of “a broader xenophobic agenda.”

“We have to stop and ask ourselves, who are his trade policies really
working for? Because if they only protect corporations, if they widen
inequality and if they ignore human rights, then they're really not serving
American interests,” Sánchez said. “Instead of reforming our trade policies
and improving our national security and our trust with other countries,
Trump has exacerbated economic pressures abroad while targeting immigrants
to appeal to his MAGA base.”

“We need to engage Latin American countries by elevating pro-labor,
environmental and indigenous rights policies. Our trade agenda should be a
critical role in doing just that,” she added. “I have spent the past 20
years working on comprehensive immigration reform, always believing that we
must address the root causes of migration or we are always going to have
people showing up at the southern border.”

The report from Public Citizen and the National Partnership for New
Americans, titled “*Exporting Instability, Importing Exploitation
<https://www.citizen.org/article/exporting-instability-importing-exploitation/>*,”
argues that migration to the U.S. from Latin American countries is a direct
consequence of a U.S.-driven trade policy, citing the North American Free
Trade Agreement and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade
Agreement in particular.

“The dominant political narrative portrays migration as a spontaneous
crisis rather than a foreseeable outcome of economic policies,” the report
says.

“Workers across borders swiftly and deeply felt the effects of NAFTA and
CAFTA. In the United States, they hollowed out manufacturing centers,
shuttered factories, and accelerated job losses in unionized industries,”
it adds. “In Latin America, where economic conditions were already fragile,
these agreements were even more devastating. They dismantled rural
livelihoods, flooded markets with subsidized U.S. agricultural products,
and deepened poverty and inequality. For many across Mexico and Central
America, migration was no longer a choice -- it became a matter of
survival.”

The report takes aim at investor-state dispute settlement provisions -- a
longtime frustration for critics of such agreements -- as well as
provisions that favored U.S. agricultural exports over smaller domestic
farmers and job gains that failed to materialize to absorb the displaced.
Accordingly, the number of undocumented immigrants from El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala to the U.S. increased by “49%, 122%, and 73%,
respectively” in the decade since CAFTA entered into force, the report
notes.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the NAFTA successor that was negotiated
and approved by Congress during the first Trump administration, was “a step
in the right direction,” Sánchez said, citing the USMCA rapid-response
mechanism designed to respond to labor abuses.

But more needs to be done, she added, pointing to the first USMCA review
set for next year. She noted that because the deal needed approval from
Congress and Democrats had control of the House at the time, negotiators
from the party were able to ensure the deal included stronger labor and
environmental standards before providing votes for it to pass.

The second Trump administration, however, has not sought congressional
input in its ongoing trade negotiations, Sánchez charged, calling this in
line with Trump’s general overreach on tariffs.

“We are in a position now where we are looking to the USMCA review that is
going to happen next year, and one of the things I have to say is that I'm
really concerned that Congress is not even going to have the opportunity to
weigh in to make the needed improvements to USMCA because Trump seems
hell-bent on negotiating trade agreements with other countries without
seeking congressional approval,” she said. “And again, in the Constitution,
that is our jurisdiction. So, at this point, it's pretty unclear whether
the Trump administration is going to push for the necessary improvements to
the USMCA agreement.”

“Instead,” she added, “they sort of seem to be chasing short-term headlines
rather than working out meaningful reforms to our trade policies, and that
includes the president's obsession with tariffs.”

United Auto Workers’ Chris Zatratz, during the same event, cited the USMCA
review as an “opportunity” to shift trade policy away from corporate
interests. USMCA, he argued, “did not stop the bleeding” for workers,
including some in the U.S. The threat of offshoring remains the “number one
threat” for U.S. workers at manufacturing plants, he said.

Accordingly, he said UAW and other unions are pushing for a manufacturing
minimum wage in Mexico to be negotiated during the USMCA review.

“A UAW member at a [General Motors] truck plant in Indiana earns over $30
an hour, while a worker building the exact same truck in Mexico earns just
$3 an hour. That is how trade policy pits workers against each other,” he
said. “Free trade policy drives a race to the bottom, to the benefit of
corporations and to the detriment of workers.”

Speakers during the event -- including Sánchez, Zatratz and Rep. Greg Casar
(D-TX) -- argued that worker voices should be prioritized over corporate
interests in trade talks. The promised “shared prosperity” of NAFTA and
CAFTA-DR, among other deals, did not materialize, but corporations have
“profit[ed] at every stage of this crisis,” the report says.

“It is not immigrants who signed trade deals that devastated American
communities and offshored tons of union jobs. No, it was the billionaire
class that did that. It was not immigrants who signed on to trade deals and
put in provisions that have been devastating to the local economies of
places like Guatemala and Honduras and country after country after country.
It was the billionaire class that pushed for those sorts of provisions in
our trade deals,” Casar said.

“It's so important for us to call out who the real villains are in our
politics and then work on real solutions,” he added.

The report outlines recommendations for such a trade policy: a more
“transparent and inclusive” process for its development; required “human
rights and displacement” impact assessments; "strong and binding" labor,
environmental and human rights standards, including facility-specific
enforcement like the RRM; the protection of governments’ rights to “manage
agricultural supplies at fair prices” to protect small farmers; the
elimination of ISDS; and the removal of digital trade provisions that
hinder privacy protection and the regulation of “Big Tech” companies, among
other prescriptions. -- *Hannah Monicken* (*hmonicken at iwpnews.com
<hmonicken at iwpnews.com>*)
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