More than 150 industrial giants issued a joint letter on Wednesday calling on Washington to end a multibillion-dollar trade dispute over Mexican truckers entering the US.
Wal-Mart Stores, General Electric and the American Farm Bureau Federation were among those who urged US President Barack Obama “to work expeditiously” to end the dispute, which has resulted in billions of dollars in tariffs being slapped on US goods.
US officials last month canceled a program that allowed some Mexican truckers to operate in the US, violating a section of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) designed to opened cross-border trucking years ago.
Mexico in turn slapped tariffs on about US$2.4 billion in US products, which they said was equal to the trade lost by the trucks no longer allowed north of the border.
OBLIGATIONS
The letter urges Obama to “ensure the United States is upholding its bilateral trade obligations with Mexico” and says that Mexico’s retaliatory measures “have the potential to shut out the targeted US products providing an opportunity for our foreign competitors to fill that void.”
The retaliation “puts over 12,000 agricultural and 14,000 manufacturing jobs at risk,” it said.
“The retaliation is already impacting the ability of a broad range of US goods to compete in the Mexican market, from potatoes and sunscreen to paper and dishwashers,” the letter read.
NAFTA, one of the world’s largest trade agreements, between the US, Canada and Mexico, came into effect on Jan. 1, 1994.
LEAD BY EXAMPLE
As Obama prepares for the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad in the middle of this month, “it will be critical for him to lead by example and demonstrate to our trading partners that the United States lives by its word,” said Chuck Dittrich, a top official with the National Foreign Trade Council.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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