Please leave this field empty
Donate Monthly Make a Gift Renew Your Membership Ways to Give
Food & Water Watch Food & Water Watch Food & Water Watch
  • About
  • Problems
  • Campaigns
  • Impacts
  • Research
  • Contact
Donate Monthly Make a Gift Renew Your Membership Ways to Give
  • facebook
  • twitter
Please leave this field empty
Food & Water Watch Food & Water Watch
$
Menu
  • About
  • News
  • Research Library
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • Donate
Search
Please leave this field empty
  • facebook
  • twitter

Trump's New Trade Deal Helps Big Food, Fracking and Chemical Companies — Not You

If this deal gets approved, it would cement Trump’s approach that prioritizes corporate profits over common-sense protections for people and the planet — and the consequences will far outlast his administration.

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • google-plus
  • envelope

We all need safe food and clean water.

Donate
By Patrick Woodall
10.4.18

Earlier this week, the Trump administration released the text of the proposed U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. While we’re poring through the details of the deal, it’s pretty clear that it means bad news for people who care about climate change, the environment, food safety, affordable medicine and other consumer safeguards because it gives big multinational corporations carte blanche to pave over our commonsense protections for people, workers and the planet.

The text includes a host of provisions furthering Trump’s aggressive deregulatory agenda. For example, the food safety chapter includes the same ‘sound science’ language championed by former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt — an approach designed to make it easier to attack food safety protections as illegal trade barriers, making it harder to uphold or implement food safety rules. The deal also establishes new ways for Canada and Mexico to second-guess U.S. border inspectors who stop suspicious food shipments so that potentially unsafe products can squeeze through. Another chapter would let industry demand that countries weaken or repeal any regulation — worker safety, environmental, chemical regulations or others — because it was too burdensome to companies.

The deal also benefits the agrochemical industry, smoothing the way for unregulated genetically modified organisms, or GMOs — which are a disaster for the environment. It includes provisions to make it easier to force Mexico to approve GMO crops (even though Mexico’s smallholder farmers do not want GMO corn) and would force Mexico to let big corporations like Bayer-Monsanto and Dow-DuPont shield data about their pesticide safety for 10 years (as already happens in the United States). Trump’s trade deal would even let these chemical companies displace or try and patent Mexico’s nearly 60 native corn varieties and charge farmers for corn they have been planting for free for generations.

It’s not just food safety problems and GMOs. The trade deal is a disaster for the climate, encouraging decades-more fossil fuel dependence (the deal doesn’t even mention climate change). It will bring more pipelines and exports of natural gas and oil that will encourage more fracking in the U.S. and Mexico at a time when we urgently need to move off of fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of the churning climate chaos we are already experiencing. The deal also threatens consumer banking safeguards and data privacy protections, and gives pharmaceutical companies “potentially lethal” new monopoly patent protections that would raise some drug prices.

In short, the deal locks in Trump’s attack on commonsense safeguards – not just for today or during this presidential administration: It cements this attack into a long-term global trade deal and could prevent us from repairing the damage Trump is doing at the EPA and many other federal agencies.

There’s been a lot of coverage about a small number of things in the new deal that are partial improvements. The new NAFTA prunes back the special investment rights that allow companies to sue over regulations like fracking bans, but it still allows some suits by U.S. oil and gas companies over drilling leases in Mexico (and a few other sectors like infrastructure).

And the jury is still out on whether the deal could stop the outsourcing of U.S. jobs. NAFTA shuttered thousands of factories and cost upwards of one million U.S. manufacturing jobs. The new deal made some steps forward on labor issues, including requirements for Mexico to eliminate the company-backed, non-independent “protection contracts” workers are often forced into. But key details remain unfinished — like when (or whether) Mexico will implement promised worker protections and how (or if) labor issues will be enforced under the deal. Our friends in the labor movement say “there are too many details to be worked out” and “despite progress, more work remains to be done.”

What we do know is that this deal is a giant step backwards for people, communities and the environment and will encourage more warming of our planet.

But it’s not a done deal yet. Congress will cast a vote on this pro-polluter deal in 2019. The first step in delivering trade policies that work for people and the environment is for Congress to reject the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

Monsanto's Roundup is a "probable human carcinogen." We need to ban it!

Get the latest on your food and water with news, research and urgent actions.

Please leave this field empty

Latest News

  • Trump’s Out, Biden’s In! Now The Fight Of Our Lives On Climate Begins.

    Trump’s Out, Biden’s In! Now The Fight Of Our Lives On Climate Begins.

  • Biden’s 100-Day Must-Do List for a Cleaner, Healthier Country

    Biden’s 100-Day Must-Do List for a Cleaner, Healthier Country

  • Fracking, Federal Lands, And Follow-Through: Will President Biden Do What He Promised?

    Fracking, Federal Lands, And Follow-Through: Will President Biden Do What He Promised?

See More News & Opinions

For Media: See our latest press releases and statements

Food & Water Insights

Looking for more insights and our latest research?

Visit our policy & research library
  • Renewable Natural Gas: Same Ol' Climate-Polluting Methane, Cleaner-Sounding Name

  • The Case to Ban Fracking on Federal Lands

  • Dangerously Deep: Fracking’s Threat to Human Health

Fracking activist with stickersFracking activist in hatLegal team loves family farmsFood & Water Watch organizer protecting your food

Work locally, make a difference.

Get active in your community.

Food & Water Impact

  • Victories
  • Stories
  • Facts
  • Trump, Here's a Better Use for $25 Billion

  • Here's How We're Going to Build the Clean Energy Revolution

  • How a California Activist Learned to Think Locally

Keep drinking water safe and affordable for everyone.

Take Action
food & water watch logo
en Español

Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold & uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people’s health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.

Food & Water Watch is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Food & Water Action is a 501(c)4 organization.

Food & Water Watch Headquarters

1616 P Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20036

Main: 202.683.2500

Contact your regional office.

Work with us: See all job openings

  • Problems
    • Broken Democracy
    • Climate Change & Environment
    • Corporate Control of Food
    • Corporate Control of Water
    • Factory Farming & Food Safety
    • Fracking
    • GMOs
    • Global Trade
    • Pollution Trading
  • Solutions
    • Advocate Fair Policies
    • Legal Action
    • Organizing for Change
    • Research & Policy Analysis
  • Our Impact
    • Facts
    • Stories
    • Victories
  • Take Action
    • Get Active Where You Live
    • Organizing Tools
    • Find an Event
    • Volunteer with Us
    • Live Healthy
    • Donate
  • Give
    • Give Now
    • Give Monthly
    • Give a Gift Membership
    • Membership Options
    • Fundraise
    • Workplace Giving
    • Planned Giving
    • Other Ways to Give
  • About
  • News
  • Research Library
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • Donate
Learn more about Food & Water Action www.foodandwateraction.org.
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • 2021 © Food & Water Watch
  • www.foodandwaterwatch.org
  • Terms of Service
  • Data Usage Policy