With just over a year and a half to go before the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC) is reviewed, and in the run-up to the presidential elections in the United States, the vehicle production industry based in Mexico says it is important that the review process continues and that the nature of light vehicles and cargo vehicles be differentiated , because each sector has independent rules.
“It is also crucial to understand that this process is a review, which is understood as a modification and/or improvement of certain aspects that are not working well. However, some voices in the United States want to take the issue a little further, which falls more into the realm of renegotiation and this implies an even more complex process,” explained Marco Rodríguez, senior manager of Government Relations for Daimler in Mexico, in an interview.
Although there are only a few days left before it is decided who will politically lead Mexico’s most important trading partner, it is necessary that the message from the Mexican government be one of continuity and optimization of the treaty. It should be noted that, at the time, Marcelo Ebrard, head of the Ministry of Economy (SE) , expressed that, unlike the renegotiation of the T-MEC in 2018, today we live in an environment of protectionism that will have to be dealt with . “We are facing a trade war between China and the United States,” he clarified.
For her part, President Claudia Sheinbaum stated during her participation in the US-Mexico CEO Dialogue 2024 that her government intends to maintain the treaty with few modifications .
“The trade agreement, the USMCA, between Canada, the United States and Mexico, complements us, it does not generate competition between us, it is a complementary scheme and it also strengthens us to continue improving the economy of the entire continent and to be able to generate a pole, a very important development block,” said the president.
In this regard, the senior manager of Government Relations for Daimler in Mexico stated that in addition to maintaining the differentiation between the types of vehicles and ensuring that the changes made are minimal, the heavy vehicle production industry seeks to ensure that issues of regional content value or labor issues are not touched upon. At the same time, it is important to pay attention to the manufacturing of microchips and the transition to electric vehicles .
“We must approach the authorities to create a proper transition plan. What we have requested from Daimler is to accelerate the issue of renewable energies , which has been a challenge that our plants have faced, having access to different types of energies because we have global decarbonization objectives with established dates,” Rodríguez said.
