David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of U.S. senators called on U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Wednesday to end “secret negotiations” with Mexico, Canada and Colombia that they say would weaken investor protections in some U.S. free trade agreements during the Biden administration’s final days .
The letter, led by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, a Republican, and the panel’s top Democrat, Ron Wyden, said Tai is seeking to reach binding agreements on legal interpretations of investment protections before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.
A source close to the trade talks rejected the senator’s characterization of the negotiations as secret, insisting that the US Trade Representative’s office consulted members of Congress despite no legal obligation to do so.
USTR officials did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the matter.
Inside US Trade newspaper quoted an unnamed USTR official who also said there had been consultation, but that Congress had delegated authority to interpret trade agreements to the agency.
The talks could change how investment disputes are handled in the US-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA), the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA -DR).
“Unfortunately, USTR is implementing significant changes to trade agreements approved by Congress on short notice, out of public view, and without meaningful consultation with Congress,” they wrote.
The USTR should conduct such negotiations in “robust consultation with Congress” and seek to use any changes to win trade concessions with Mexico, Canada and other partners, the senators said.
A spokesman for Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When the US Chamber of Commerce first raised concerns about the USTR discussions in December, the agency denied that secret, formal negotiations were underway.
Because USTR never announced the talks, the exact changes Tai is seeking have not been made public.
But Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has said he wants to renegotiate the country’s US trade deal to scrap investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions that allow companies to use third-party courts to arbitrate investment disputes, leading to large compensation claims against their government.
DEMOCRATS ON BOTH SIDES
A group of 37 Democratic lawmakers called on Tai in December to eliminate ISDS tribunals, arguing that they give corporations too much power against legitimate government actions and make it easier for them to move American jobs overseas.
But since then, a growing number of Republican lawmakers, along with several Democrats, have denounced the debates, arguing that weakening investment protections will undermine American companies.
Last week, 26 members of the House of Representatives, including 16 Republicans and 10 Democrats, sent Tai a letter, expressing concern that the negotiations could end a USMCA provision that allowed U.S. company Vulcan Materials (NYSE: ) to file lawsuits against Mexico over a new nature reserve that damaged its limestone quarry and port on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Vulcan Quarry is a key supplier for infrastructure projects in the Southeastern US
“What Mexico did was step in and steal this asset. It expropriated it,” Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty told Fox News Channel on Sunday, referring to the Vulcan quarry. “And what Biden is doing here at the 11th hour is trying to turn this over to Mexico.”
