Question

What may happen to telecommunication industry in Mexico if NAFTA is ended? what changes to the trade policies may be/happen in the future?

- please include as much data as possible with numbers and quotes. answer should be explained briefly using examples and numbers- no point forms.

Answer 1

The trade war has already begun. Anger is growing in Mexico, as is resistance to the new economic protectionist policy announced by newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump.

"Trump's motto has asserted an anti-Mexico rhetoric," says Günther Maihold, deputy director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He says that "America first" is a bitter pill for Mexican nationals to swallow, and means huge costs for the country.

Despite the state of shock, resistance is mounting against import duties for Mexican exports or even the US' withdrawal from the free trade agreement NAFTA. Many construction firms, tourism companies and municipal administrations want to show a "symbol of national unity" and plan to boycott automobiles made in the USA.

"We will no longer buy automobiles from Ford for our fleet," announced the governor of the Mexican state of Campeche, Alejandro Moreno Cardenas, in the Mexican newspaper "El Universal." That was his response to the withdrawal of the company's planned investment in the country.

For example, while Canada may want to modernize NAFTA's rules of origin – which determine which goods qualify for duty-free treatment – to make them easier to use, the United States will want to make those rules more restrictive. The United States will also seek to eliminate the binational dispute settlement mechanism that allows Canadian governments and businesses to challenge U.S. anti-dumping and anti-subsidy determinations before bilateral panels rather than in U.S. courts. U.S. asks may well include concessions by Canada in sensitive areas such as

supply-managed agriculture, the lifting of foreign investment restrictions in the telecommunications sector, limits on Canadian softwood lumber exports and changes to intellectual-property rights to more closely mirror the U.S. system.

While the president-elect's NAFTA-related opprobrium has been directed at Mexico, Canadian negotiators – as well as Canadian businesses and their U.S. allies – will need to be nimble in order to preserve, let alone improve on, the status quo for Canada-U.S. trade.