The absence of “climate change” or “global warming,” from the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) frustrated environmentalist groups, according to Huffington Post and EcoWatch. They also complained it included “corporate giveaways” to the gas and oil industry.
The replacement deal for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was announced on Oct. 1, after months of negotiations between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. President Donald Trump promised a renegotiation of NAFTA during his presidential campaign.
Huffington Post’s Alexander Kaufman admitted the deal “won early praise for changes meant to raise wages and improve safety regulations on cross-border trucking,” but then focused on opposition and criticism from environmental groups. His Oct.1, article was also republished by left-wing eco-website Grist.org.
Those environmental “groups panned the accord ... arguing it includes ‘corporate giveaways’ for fossil fuel giants, excludes binding agreements on lead pollution and contains no mention of human-caused global warming,” he wrote. Kaufman quoted critics from liberal environmental groups Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth (FOTE).
“Trump’s trade agreement with Mexico and Canada is a corporate giveaway intended to sharply limit the powers of government to protect people and the planet,” FOTE’s Doug Norlen told HuffPo. “This agreement is an attack on our ability to hold Big Oil and Gas accountable for the damage they cause to our communities.”
Ben Beachy of the Sierra Club told HuffPost that “after Trump is out of office, we’re going to have to work hard to re-regulate.”
EcoWatch published a similar attack on the USMCA on Oct. 2, which referenced the HuffPo story, but added more complaints from Sierra Club’s executive director Michael Brune about the agreements lack of “a single binding rule to reduce the air pollution that NAFTA has exacerbated.”
Green opposition to such trade agreements isn’t new. Kaufman’s HuffPo article noted that “Environmental groups loathed NAFTA” for what they claimed what outsourcing pollution. The Daily Signal also reported in 2017, The Sierra Club and other environmentalists were attacking NAFTA at least as far back as 2014, in spite of the economic benefits the deal led to in all three participating countries. Daily Signal also noted that water and sanitation conditions in Mexico both improved during NAFTA years.
Although liberal environmentalists don’t like the agreement — which still must be ratified by Congress — it will benefit American dairy farmers and drug companies among others, according to Associated Press.
AP reported that the leaders of all three nations were pleased by the agreement. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada didn’t accept just “any deal,” “We got the right deal. We got a win-win-win for all three countries.” Outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was also pleased with the deal, describing it as a “win-win-win” on Twitter.
