The subject is sugar, but it’s the entire NAFTA agreement that hangs in the balance when top officials from Mexico and the United States meet Monday afternoon in Washington.
A few domestic sugar interests are insisting that the U.S. Commerce Department eliminate nearly all of Mexico’s refined-sugar exports to the U.S. and that it direct Mexican raw sugar exports to two favored U.S. refiners. Mexico has rejected those terms but has shown willingness to compromise.
That nation’s economic minister, Idefonso Guajardo, and the U.S. commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, will try to reach an agreement, but Ross says the talks are at an “impasse.”
If a final attempt at negotiations fails and the U.S. goes ahead with draconian limits on Mexican sugar, Mexico has promised to retaliate. The target will be shipments of high-fructose corn syrup from the United States, which have increased greatly under NAFTA. The Trump Administration could well take the next step, perhaps targeting other Mexican exports and two-way trade between the countries – which amounted to $580 billion in goods and services last year – will unravel.
In the past, the strife between the U.S. and Mexico over sugar drew little attention. But no longer. It is now the central stage in the drama over the fate of NAFTA, an agreement that Donald Trump consistently excoriated on the campaign trail.