Mexican industrialists, like the steel industry entrepreneurs, are pushing for the Mexican government to end or withdraw from the free trade agreement with Asia, better known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) due to the commercial disadvantages for the industrial sector in Mexico, said the director of Canacero.
“It is not just Canacero, it is all industrial sectors. Concamin itself made an internal consultation and there is a consensus that it is a commercial agreement that does not benefit any industrial sector,” said the general director of Canacero Salvador Quesada in a private meeting with members of the National Confederation of Steel Distributors (Conadiac).
The TPP is a free trade agreement that includes countries in Asia, Oceania, North America and South America: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It has been in force in Mexico since 2018.
Canacero is a member of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin), which says that its members contribute 30 percent of Mexico's GDP ($1.81 trillion).
Quesada said that in the last presidential administration (2018-2024), “The previous Secretary of Economy made statements that it wanted to leave the TPP, because all sectors, not just the steel industry, told them that (the TPP) is of no use to us. The TPP was the worst negotiation for Mexico”.
The executive also said that at the recent OECD Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity in Paris, which examines China's steel production overcapacity, there was also talk of the alleged triangulation of Chinese steel through Mexico to reach the United States.
For the steel industry, the TPP serves as a way for China's satellite countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam to flood Mexico with subsidized steel and triangulate it to the United States.