The administration of Donald Trump is arrogantly seeking to topple the house of cards that supports the international trade order. As critics of this system, we see in it** opportunities and challenges to rethink tri-national relations and overcome neoliberal dogmas. However, the chaos and impacts that these measures cause to workers and farmers throughout North America is a matter of concern. The peoples of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada share their vulnerability to capricious trade policy changes.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements introduced rules to allow companies to operate transnationally and gave them new powers to sue governments for any regulations benefiting communities that hinder their profits. Free trade agreements (FTAs) are about allowing goods and services to be generated where labor, regulatory and fiscal costs are lower and sold where there is greater purchasing power.
Trump, however, blames workers from other countries and migrants to the U.S. for the economic difficulties and the massive increase in inequality in that country since NAFTA went into effect. We reject this nationalistic and distorted view of reality. Workers in all three countries have been harmed by corporations that circumvent national regulations through trade and investment treaties.
Social and civil society organizations (CSOs) have been working for decades to develop alternatives to NAFTA, which is the fundamental weapon of neoliberalism (https://tinyurl.com/z9ju2ahk). In the NAFTA renegotiations towards the 2018-19 Mexico-United States-Canada Agreement (T-MEC), dozens of international allies presented how international trade rules could be transformed into a progressive agenda for the benefit of people and planet (https://tinyurl.com/3aeunuaa).
True, some improvements were made in the T-MEC, such as labor provisions that include an effective “rapid response mechanism” to major labor rights violations in Mexico (https://tinyurl.com/4jx9khnw). NAFTA’s undemocratic investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions between Canada and the U.S. were also eliminated, although they remain partially in place between the U.S. and Mexico (hence the need to eliminate Annex D of Chapter 14 on investment). We [Mexico] also succeeded in blocking some of Trump’s extremist proposals on intellectual property rights that would have increased drug prices throughout North America.
Since before Trump’s imposition of steel, aluminum and auto tariffs on Canada and Mexico, social and civil organizations have been considering how the 2026 T-MEC review could be used to push beyond these modest improvements to trade rules. But the U.S. president’s actions have only complicated the scenarios by pitting workers and governments against each other.
While tariffs can be useful as part of economic development strategies, as a source of revenue for a country, last week’s U.S. Court of International Trade ruling (La Jornada, 5/31/25), makes it very clear that Trump’s tariffs are not linked to any such agenda and are, consequently, illegal.
Although Trump has withdrawn universal tariffs on Canada and Mexico, those that remain threaten jobs, even in the US, and violate the T-MEC, which Trump himself negotiated during his first term and which he contradictorily still claims is working well. We are at a point where it is still unclear what Trump wants, whether to keep the T-MEC or negotiate new bilateral treaties.
Demands for a North American region focused on public welfare include the urgency of a just transition to address climate change, recognition of indigenous rights and sovereignty, an end to sexual harassment and violence in the workplace, the fight for equal pay and good jobs, migrant workers’ rights in all three countries, among others. Are they likely to be included in the agenda of a trinational trade dialogue under Trump? Most likely not. But it is not just the Trump administration that is the problem; Canada has just elected a government that hopes to quickly reach a new trade and security agreement with the US, in part by complying with Trump’s demands to significantly increase other countries’ military spending. Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, too, wants to quickly complete the review of the T-MEC with Trump, and seems to be in no hurry, so far, to consult the Mexican people on what that agreement should look like.
But the defense of economic and social justice depends first and foremost on an articulation and unification of a North American civil society to strengthen the cause of workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, women, environmental and human rights defenders in all three countries.
We must oppose Trump’s tariffs to divide us. In our three countries we want decent jobs, healthy food systems and environments, and as Sheinbaum touted when she was a student, “fair trade with democracy.” Trump’s gunboat diplomacy will only lead to further disintegration and race to the bottom. Alternatives to T-MEC and other treaties developed over decades through international solidarity offer a real path to counter corporate power and build inclusive economies and constructive international relations. Social and civil organizations in all three countries are already in coordination. One example was the T-MEC National Assembly convened by the Citizens’ Alliance for Peace on May 21 at the Human Rights Commission of the CDMX (https:// tinyurl.com/yp486rn7).
**Article based on a collaboration with Stuart Trew, director of Trade and Investment Research at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Karen Hansen-Kuhn, director of international trade and strategy at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), published in Foreign Policy in Focus (www. fpif.org).
Original text by Manuel Pérez Rocha of the Institute for Policy Studies, published in La Jornada on June 2nd, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.