North America Archive

A quarter of a century after labor standards first became a bone of contention in trade talks to conclude the North American Free Trade Agreement, weak enforcement of labor standards in Mexico is one of the key issues holding up a vote on President Donald Trump’s renegotiation of NAFTA, now rebranded the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Every U.S. trade agreement since NAFTA has included language nominally aimed at protecting workers. Yet despite significant strengthening over the years, the labor provisions in those trade agreements remain controversial and largely ineffective for foreign and American workers alike. NAFTA was only the third free trade […]

The city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state in northern Mexico, looked like a war zone last week as heavily armed members of the notorious Sinaloa cartel attacked Mexican security forces trying to arrest Ovidio Guzman Lopez, a son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Residents dodged bullets and burning buses as gunmen besieged the city. Guzman Lopez has helped lead the Sinaloa cartel since his father’s arrest in 2016. The brazen attack in broad daylight left at least eight people dead, including a member of Mexico’s National Guard, and injured dozens more. Outmanned and outgunned, […]

Politics was always going to play an outsized role in congressional deliberations on the revised NAFTA deal—now known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA—as it does with most trade agreements. Assuming that President Donald Trump addresses their concerns about labor standards in Mexico and other issues, House Democrats will have to decide whether to give the president a “big win” that he can trumpet in next year’s election. Trump will have to decide whether he’d rather have that or, by refusing to accommodate their demands, a stick with which to beat up the Democrats as do-nothing partisans. The impeachment inquiry […]

Voters in Canada will go to the polls on Oct. 21 to decide whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be returned to power. Trudeau swept into office following a decisive victory in the 2015 federal elections, but his popularity has declined precipitously since then as a result of several high-profile scandals. This year’s election is widely seen as a toss-up, with polls showing Trudeau’s Liberal Party running neck-and-neck with the main opposition Conservative Party, led by Andrew Scheer. In an email interview with WPR, Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced […]