Report: Border Communities' Economies Would Suffer Under TPP

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership would have devastating impacts on the local economies of U.S-Mexican border communities, the Texas Fair Trade Coalition (TFTC) warned in a report it presented on Thursday. 

In the report titled, “The TPP & the Border Economy,” the authors from the TFTC argued that the TPP agreement couple wipe out Mexican manufacturing industries due to competition with Asian countries that have lower wages and labor standards. 

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“The jobs that are currently in Mexico’s maquiladoras and automobile factories will be under a great challenge and competition from the low-wage Asian countries that are in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including Vietnam and Malaysia,” said Bob Cash, director of the Texas Fair Trade Coalition. 

The study goes on to note that “given the high level of integration between U.S. border communities’ economies and that of Mexico, this could result in significant economic losses for U.S. border communities.”

The TFTC cites cities such as Juarez and El Paso as being particularly vulnerable to the proposed trade agreement, which would likely grant greater access of Asian products to U.S markets. 

Under the proposed agreement, new duty-free access stipulations would undermine and erode the demand for Mexican manufactured goods such as apparel products, electronics and automobiles. 

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The report warns that Mexican manufacturing jobs may endure similar outcomes, akin to what El Paso’s labor force suffered under a similar trade agreement known as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 

“According to the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program administered by the Department of Labor, more than 178,000 specific Texas jobs have been certified as lost to offshoring or imports since NAFTA,” the report added. 

The reported noted that the TPP is likely to include many trade related measures contained in the NAFTA agreement, which directly contributed to the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs. If given the final approval the TPP trade agreement will include nations representing 36 percent of global gross domestic product and 25 percent of all international trade.