Letter to the Hon. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States - Letter To President Cautioning Against NAFTA Withdrawal

Letter

Dear Mr. President:

We write to you to stress the importance of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Updating and modernizing this 24-year old agreement to grow U.S. competitiveness and good-paying jobs are bipartisan objectives. At the same time, the modernization process must also recognize that NAFTA has brought about a deeper economic relationship between our three countries on which millions of workers depend. Changes to NAFTA must keep in top of mind those workers and the businesses, many of them small and medium enterprises (SME) that have been able to grow their global competitiveness and U.S. footprint because of NAFTA, not in spite of it.

Most importantly, we urge you to recognize the highly negative impact that withdrawing from the agreement would have on millions of these workers and tens of thousands of industries that rely on sales to and partnerships with Canada and Mexico. This economic devastation that withdrawal would create would not be confined to any particular region, but rather would cost jobs all over the country in a wide variety of industries, from agriculture and manufacturing to services and technology.

As our country's top two export countries, trade with Canada and Mexico has risen to $1.3 trillion annually, supporting 14 million American jobs, including more than two million manufacturing jobs. Every day, goods valued at more than $3.3 billion move across the borders between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and Canadians and Mexicans purchased $500 billion worth of goods manufactured in the U.S. In fact, half of all goods imported by Canada and Mexico are U.S.A-made.

Among those who have benefited from NAFTA are America's farmers and ranchers. U.S. agricultural exports to both Canada and Mexico have quadrupled under the agreement from $8.9 billion in 1993 to $38.1 billion in 2016, stimulating growth in rural America and decreasing prices for consumers. Similarly, U.S. manufactured goods exports have more than tripled to Canada and Mexico, from $129 billion in 1993 to nearly $469 in 2017, making Canada and Mexico the largest foreign purchasers of made-in-the-USA manufactured goods, more than the next 10 U.S. trading partners combined. Additionally, American small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been one of the agreement's greatest beneficiaries, with NAFTA enabling 125,000 SMEs to sell their goods and services to Canada and Mexico.

NAFTA is now intertwined throughout our economy, and we are committed to working with you to improve it so that it provides stronger benefits across the nation. To achieve this goal requires that we keep NAFTA in place as a trilateral agreement and modernize it in ways that will create certainty, raise standards, and strengthen enforcement so that this can truly be a model agreement for the 21st century. On behalf of the millions of Americans whose jobs depend on this relationship and the tens of millions more that benefit from it, we urge you to work with us to modernize - not withdraw from -- NAFTA.

Sincerely,