CAMBRIDGE, MA., Aug 19 (IPS) – Closing arguments are in within the U.S. commerce grievance in opposition to Mexico’s restrictions on genetically modified (GM) corn, with the three-arbitrator tribunal set to rule on the matter in November. The legitimacy of the commerce settlement itself hangs within the steadiness.
In the middle of the year-long course of Mexico has dismantled U.S. claims, exhibiting that its precautionary measures are permitted underneath the phrases of the commerce settlement, that its restrictions barely impression U.S. exports, and that it has a mountain of scientific proof of threat to justify its precautionary insurance policies.
Will the panel let the U.S. use a commerce settlement cease a coverage that hardly impacts commerce?
The U.S. authorities requested this formal dispute-resolution course of a yr in the past underneath the U.S.-Mexico-Canada commerce settlement (USMCA) over Mexico’s February 2023 presidential decree that restricted the usage of GM corn in tortillas and phased out the usage of the herbicide glyphosate, which is utilized to 80% of U.S. corn. Mexico cited proof of each GM corn and glyphosate in tortillas and different widespread corn preparations and documented the dangers from such exposures, significantly for a Mexican inhabitants that eats greater than ten instances the quantity of corn consumed per capita in the US.
The place is the commerce restriction?
The U.S. declare has been specious from the beginning. In its grievance it mischaracterized Mexico’s presidential decree as a “Tortilla Corn Ban” and a “Substitution Instruction” to part out imports of GM yellow corn for animal feed. Mexico, in its written filings within the case, has repeatedly objected to those phrases.
By calling it a “tortilla corn ban” the U.S. is implying that Mexico has banned U.S. exports of white corn, the sort generally utilized in tortillas. They have not. They solely banned the usage of GM corn in tortillas and in different meals created from minimally processed (floor) white corn. It’s a ban on use, not imports. White corn exports, together with GM white corn, nonetheless move from the U.S. to Mexico. They simply cannot be used within the tortilla/corn-flour meals chain.
As a result of the overwhelming majority of U.S. corn exports are yellow varieties for animal feed and industrial makes use of, the restriction barely impacts U.S. corn producers. The place is the commerce restriction?
A lot of the U.S. case rests on its deceptive characterization of the “Substitution Instruction” as a commerce restriction. It’s no such factor.
The U.S. argues that the 2023 decree mandates the eventual phase-out of all GM corn imports, threatening the $5 billion-per-year Mexican marketplace for U.S. yellow corn – 97% of U.S. exports – overwhelmingly GM varieties primarily used as animal feed. Regardless that Mexico has no present restrictions on such U.S. exports, and none are deliberate, the U.S. argues that Mexico’s mandate threatens future earnings it anticipated to obtain from the commerce settlement.
Commerce lawyer Ernesto Hernández López took on the U.S. deception, mentioning that there is no such thing as a mandate (instruction) to cease utilizing GM corn, simply to develop extra different non-GM feed sources and use them as they grow to be out there. The unique decree makes use of the time period “gradual substitution” (sustitución paulatina) and makes clear that it’s primarily based on provides being out there.
As Hernández López factors out, the commerce panel shouldn’t settle for a U.S. argument primarily based overwhelmingly on hypothetical future reductions in Mexican imports of GM feed corn. The U.S. case is made all of the weaker by information exhibiting that U.S. feed-corn exports to Mexico have gone up considerably because the 2023 decree, a results of weak harvests resulting from drought.
Take into account the info
The USMCA tribunal ought to take into account the info:
The Mexican authorities has additionally highlighted how lax and riddled with conflicts of curiosity the U.S. regulatory course of is for GM corn, a cost backed by the U.S. Middle for Meals Security. Because of this, as a Reuters headline put it in March, “Mexico ready on US proof that GM corn protected for its individuals.”
After tons of of pages of filings and two days of hearings, Mexico continues to be ready for that proof. Hopefully the tribunal will weigh the info, dismiss the U.S. declare, and never permit the U.S. to misuse a commerce settlement to cease a coverage it would not like.
Timothy A. Smart is a Senior Analysis Fellow at Tufts College’s International Growth and Setting Institute and the creator of Consuming Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Household Farmers and the Battle for the Way forward for Meals.
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