CGTN America: Eric Farnsworth, USMCA Is "Absolutely a Win"

Eric Farnsworth, vice president of AS/COA, spoke to CGTN America about the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), in a discussion that included Americas Society Board Member Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican Ambassador to the United States. Karen Kerrigan, the president and CEO of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, and Stephen LeDrew, a lawyer and contributor to the National Post, also participated.

Farnsworth explained that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the ground that the three countries had been playing on for a generation and was the basis for the negotiation of USMCA.

“It’s absolutely a win because it maintains at a high level the North American trading and economic relationship,” Farnsworth said. “If you compare this to a perfect agreement, whatever that perfect agreement may be, this probably falls some ways short. But if you compare it to no agreement, or a collapse of the North American trade and economic relationship, then it’s a huge win for all three countries.”

Sarukhan said that the relationship between Mexico and the United States has been tense for a few years, in part due to President Donald Trump's comments about Mexicans in the United States. 

"He has used Mexico as a political electoral piñata," Sarukhan said. "I'm concerned because of the way that Mexico responded to the threat of punitive tariffs in March, linked to immigration issues, that President Trump may have found a way to extract concessions on many other issues."