Mary Anastasia O’Grady has been a consistent supporter of what was once called NAFTA and now renamed as USMCA, or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, initiated by President Trump.
O'Grady writes "The Americas," a weekly column on politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada that appears every Monday in the Wall Street Journal. She joined the paper in August 1995 and became a senior editorial page writer in December 1999. She was appointed an editorial board member in November 2005.
In recent articles she expresses fear for the USMCA. Why? Because of the intermingling of Trump-era tariffs and the concept of free trade in the USMCA.
In her June 28 article, "A Trade Deal Trump Should Reaffirm," she states that Canada and Mexico’s trade now amounts to $1.9 trillion in 2025 compared to $297 billion in 1993 and that the National Associations of Manufacturers has called it “the most pro-US manufacturing trade in history,” To quote O’Grady, the NAM said that the pact has “boosted manufacturing in the US to unparalleled levels.”
On September 28, she penned a column titled, "Can North American Trade Survive Trump?”
Why is O’Grady’s focus in Mexico when Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has struck back at Trump so quickly? The drug cartels.
She says that US and Mexican trade negotiators are working to resolve the tariffs imposed by Section 232 of an earlier trade expansion act.
“This is a dangerous moment for continental free trade. Mexico may get some tariff relief. But the odds are that the Trump administration will want to extract a pound of flesh in return.”
She says that Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s President, is in “search of half a loaf.” Later she says that this “would also mark the end of the zero-duty era launched under the North American Free Trade Agreement 1994.”
If this happens, she says it would “drive a stake through the heart of North American competitiveness.”
How is Sheinbaum handling this as compared to Canada’s Mark Carney? Obviously, she has a much more difficult job due to the cartel presence in her country and the continued pressure from Donald Trump to deal with those cartels and also negotiate tariffs with him, two closely related issues.
The question now for Sheinbaum is whether or not to take action against Rubén Rocha Moya, Governor of Sinaloa and a major figure in Morena, her political party. He has been targeted by the US. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal (October 7) reported on a dawn meeting Sheinbaum had with her security officials and noted that she was “unusually harsh “with Omar Garcia Harfuch. He was her Chief of Police when she was Mayor of Mexico City and survived an attack in central Mexico City when 400 bullets hit his car, killing two officers and a woman bystander. He was shot three times.
Now he is the security minister for Sheinbaum. The article is confusing, but it appears that Harfuch was working more closely than she wanted with the US. Eventually she agreed to freeze those bank accounts.
(Incidentally, shirts with his name on them have surged since the 2020 attack and he is rumored to be Mexico’s President after Sheinbaum’s term ends.)
Sheinbaum has a difficult struggle ahead. Does she accede to Trump’s request and gain favor with the US or hold her ground in terms of Mexican sovereignty which will bring her support among Mexicans?
No wonder O’Grady focused on Mexico.
The larger issue is whether the USMCA project can be expanded to make these three countries what they should be – a counterpart to the growing influence of China. That means less attention to China, a country that will always be a rival and more in Mexico and Canada. O’Grady points out that we have it wrong. I hope that more Americans are listening.
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Colorado-based writer and researcher Morgan Smith. He writes regularly about U.S.-Mexico border issues. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author.
