U.S.-Mexico relations are on the rocks again, but that isn’t because of a fast-talking American politician who insults the neighbors. (That was
Donald Trump,
in case you forgot.) The latest confrontation is a looming commercial conflict triggered by Mexican President
Andrés Manuel López Obrador,
aka AMLO.
Last month Mexico’s Deputy Agriculture Minister
Víctor Suárez
told Reuters that his country plans to go ahead with a 2020 decree that aims to phase out genetically modified yellow corn. The target date for implementation is 2024. AMLO wants Mexico to end the purchase and production of food that relies on the use of the herbicide glyphosate and to return to only consuming foods produced with non-GM corn.
This is going to be a problem for all of North America. Mexico buys 16.8 million metric tons of yellow corn, mostly for feed, from the U.S. annually. Mexico is the second largest importer of corn in the world, after China, and most of it is supplied by American farmers. It’s the second-largest corn export market for U.S. growers. Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack
told RFD-TV, a rural U.S. news outlet, at the end of September that his team has been trying to “persuade” Mexican officials that a ban on GM corn would be “catastrophic” not only for U.S. agriculture but also for agriculture in Mexico and for Mexican consumers.
That’s no exaggeration. According to a study released Sept. 19 by Virginia-based business management consultant World Perspectives Inc., the negative effects of a Mexican prohibition on GM corn would be devastating—at home and abroad.
The study was done for a multinational group of food and agricultural interests, including Mexico’s National Agriculture Council and the Mexican Association of Food Producers. It found that over a “10-year forecast period, the Mexican ban on GM corn would cause the U.S. economy to lose $73.89 billion in economic output, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would contract by $30.55 billion.” In the first year of a ban, the U.S. corn industry alone would suffer a net loss of $3.56 billion, followed by a loss of $5.56 billion in the second year. More broadly, via a ripple effect, “the U.S. would lose 32,217 jobs annually with labor income falling $18.38 billion.”
The Canadian economy would also…
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