December 3, 2025
Today, delegates from our cross-border coalition are testifying at the U.S. Trade Representative’s official hearings on the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). They carry firsthand accounts from workers, Indigenous communities, Afro-descendant leaders, and land and water defenders whose lives are directly shaped, and often harmed, by this agreement.
The purpose is clear: to strengthen a cross-border alliance that defends life, dignity, and sovereignty, and to say plainly that USMCA must either become a guarantor of human rights or be terminated if it continues to enable devastation, exploitation, corruption, and corporate greed.
Read our Five Reasons to Improve or Cancel USMCA to understand why we are demanding a sweeping human-rights approach.
Today’s testimony is part of a larger effort we’ve been building for months. Trade deals and their corporate beneficiaries operate without borders, while millions of workers and communities impacted by them are blocked from moving freely across the region to fight for their rights. This needs to change.
That is why we worked with partners across Mexico, the U.S., and Canada to ensure grassroots voices are heard in Washington as the U.S. launches 2025 consultations ahead of the mandatory 2026 USMCA review.
In November, Global Exchange welcomed a delegation of 18 human-rights defenders, Afro-descendant community members, farmers, and Indigenous leaders from Mexico and the U.S. to Washington, D.C.
Delegates included: Quetzal Tzab, representing Indigenous communities impacted by the Vulcan Company in the Mexican Caribbean. José Sampietro, defending native corn and campesino agriculture. Iakowi:he’ne’ Oakes, Haudenosaunee Confederacy leader confronting unfair trade rules from the U.S. and Canada. Rita Robles, representing union women. Víctor Quintana, bringing decades of experience with rural movements. Carla García, from Black Co-Networks for Peace and Justice, representing Black communities in Honduras and the U.S. harmed by corporate extraction.
Their mission: to push for a human-rights framework in the USMCA consultations.
They carried the demands of more than 100 organizations — including the Mexican Advocacy Assembly for Human Rights at USMCA, the People’s Movement for Peace and Justice (PMPJ), and unions and labor groups from both sides of the border — united under one message: People Over Profits.
During three intensive days in Washington, we visited over a dozen Congressional offices. We held a Congressional briefing with Representative Joaquín Castro’s office to explain why an agreement that governs $1.5 trillion in annual trade must address economic inequality, environmental devastation, violence, and migration.
The delegation also held a rally outside the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and met with unions and civil-society groups in D.C.
This visit is part of a collaborative trinational effort drawing on decades of movement experience. We are grateful for the strategic guidance and support of allies like Trade Justice Education Fund, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Read IPS’s Manuel Pérez Rocha’s recent article in La Jornada about the delegation’s significance and why our agenda must shape the coming negotiations.
And today, we will deliver formal testimony directly to U.S. trade officials as part of the USTR’s official USMCA hearings.
Our collective demands are clear:
1. Workers still lack freedom of association.
We demand harmonized, affordable processes for filing Rapid Response Labor Mechanism cases across all three countries.
2. Human mobility is ignored.
Migrants must be treated with dignity and regularized as part of USMCA — a standard already included in other U.S. trade agreements.
3. Biodiversity, water, and native seeds are at risk.
We oppose seed privatization, defend the ban on GMO corn for human consumption, and call for excluding corn and beans from USMCA.
4. Indigenous Peoples and communities are excluded.
We demand full participation, recognition of Indigenous territories, legal personhood of nature, and mandatory environmental investigations before dispute panels.
5. USMCA shields harmful investments and fuels insecurity.
We call for eliminating ISDS, which threatens national and community sovereignty, and for confronting arms trafficking, money laundering, and structural violence linked to cross-border trade.
With more than 130,000 disappearances in Mexico, over 250,000 U.S. guns trafficked into Mexico annually, rising criminalization of migrants, and deepening inequality, we cannot continue with business as usual.
Join us by staying connected through our social media platforms, where the voices of those most impacted by trade, and most excluded from power, can be heard in real time: Instagram, X, Bluesky, Facebook.