CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Why It’s Essential to Fix the USMCA

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Nancy Duran Rodriguez took several pairs of work gloves to Mexico in 2025, intending to hand them out as a goodwill gesture to fellow union workers she met there.

But Duran Rodriguez, a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6787 in Burns Harbor, Indiana, discovered that some of her Mexican counterparts lacked even the most basic personal protective equipment to guard against heat, toxins, jagged objects, and other risks on the job.

Grateful workers there saw the gloves as a godsend, not souvenirs.

It’s a sobering reminder of how corporations continue to exploit Mexico’s low wages, poor working conditions, and lax enforcement of labor laws to oppress working families on both sides of the border.

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to change this. The USW, other unions, and our allies are pushing for meaningful improvements to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the trade pact subject to “joint review” and modification by all three countries this summer.

The six-year-old USMCA replaced the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which emboldened greedy companies to abandon U.S. factories, shift hundreds of thousands of jobs to Mexico, and hollow out our manufacturing communities.

Although it represented a step forward, the USMCA has so far failed to end this race to the bottom. Employers keep ditching America and moving jobs to Mexico. Employers go right on victimizing Mexican workers, who still make a fraction of Americans’........

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