WASHINGTON, DC- Today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA), Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Congressman Dan Kildee (D-MI), member of the Ways and Means’ Subcommittee on Trade released the following statement after a second complaint was filed under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA) Rapid Response Labor Mechanism for potential labor violations at a plant in Mexico:
“Reports that workers at the General Motors plant in Silao, Mexico were intimidated, threatened, and had their union ballots thrown out are deeply troubling. We strongly support the U.S. Trade Representative’s actions today to proactively use the agreement’s enforcement mechanisms.
“As members of the House Ways and Means Committee, we led efforts in Congress to secure significant improvements to the agreement, including more robust enforcement tools, to support workers. We also fought to establish a new paradigm for aggressive enforcement of trade agreements in the USMCA Implementation Act. In this case, Mexican workers took advantage of the hotline established in the Implementation Act to report potential violations at this facility to the U.S. government. The Implementation Act also provided unprecedented, requisite funding to USTR and DOL so that both agencies would have the resources necessary to bring cases like this one.
“Violations of our trade agreements, either by governments or corporations, must be swiftly addressed. We must enforce trade deals for agreements like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement to succeed. We look forward to working with Ambassador Tai and President Biden to support workers and ensure that the USMCA is aggressively enforced."
