Mexico City – The United States rejected Friday the request by Mexico to renegotiate the NAFTA clause that requires the Mexican government to eliminate tariffs on imports of maize and beans by January 2008.
The U.S. undersecretary of agriculture, J.B. Penn, said in a Mexico City press conference that his country “is not interested” in renegotiating the total opening of the Mexican markets for those products.
Nevertheless, he said that his country will deepen the accords of technological and productive cooperation with the Mexican government and the farmers.
“We want to make the transition as smooth as we possibly can,” Penn said, adding that U.S. officials are aware of anxieties here over the full implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
On April 27, Mexican Agriculture Minister Francisco Mayorga and Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba sent a letter asking their U.S. counterparts for a meeting to discuss revising the articles on maize and beans because these sectors are very sensitive within the Mexican economy.
For his part, Mayorga said that there is a “great willingness of the United States to cooperate” in such areas as technical assistance, research and development, joint investments, infrastructure, machinery and equipment, and that progress in these areas is well underway.
He also said that there will soon be a trilateral meeting in Canada of the agricultural heads of the three NAFTA partners at which “we will continue to study these ideas.”
Many Mexican farmers complain of being unable to compete with U.S. producers who enjoy government subsidies and easier access to credit and technology.
Earlier this week, disgruntled dairy farmers dumped cattle carcasses outside Mexico’s economy ministry to protest what they denounce as the government’s failure to protect the sector from a flood of U.S. imports.
Center-left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promises to renegotiate the NAFTA clauses on maize and beans if he wins the July 2 election to succeed conservative Vicente Fox.
Lopez Obrador and the candidate of Fox’s party, Felipe Calderon, are currently tied in the polls.
