With the USMCA Trade Deal in the news, you have probably been wondering how this will benefit all of us… Well, if you live in North America, it could positively affect your work. It will undoubtedly change many things and provide new opportunities. So, in my opinion, it is a good thing to look and see right at the outset how this could change our lives.
Wherever we live in the world, we are no longer isolated. We live in an interconnected world of symbiotic relationships.
While someone sits quietly and sips their morning coffee in front of their home computer, somewhere else, someone drives up to a cafe drive-through on their way to the office, and on the other side of the world, bags of coffee beans are being loaded onto a transport ship. This is all because coffee farmers plant, harvest, and caringly tend coffee crops somewhere in the twenty-two Latin American Countries, Africa, or Asia.
Then you can trace things even further to seemingly unrelated items such as a china coffee mug with someone’s favorite cute slogan on it, such as ‘Talk to me after I’ve had my coffee!”
Then the seemingly innocent throw-away coffee cup with a logo on it. Innocent, maybe, uncomplicated, not really. The throw-away cup takes quite a journey from idea to sip. Made anywhere in the world, from gulping ‘glop-it-y glop’ machines chewing pulp paper to a chemist lab of scientists cooking up the latest formula to make it water-tight, transportable, and, we now hope, biodegradable! A mixture of polyethylene, benzaldehyde, ethylene, styrene, BPA, and phthalates, all thrown in for good measure. Millions of cups are almost untouched by human hands, spun out by huge monstrous machinery, and loaded onto ships, planes, and trucks.
The Evolution of Digital Trade
Good, bad, or indifferent, which happens across the globe more than ever, affects you and me wherever we live. It affects our way of life, our livelihood, and our freedoms. We take that first sip of delicious brew, oblivious to all the hands along the way that use it to sustain their income and family’s way of life.
And yet so has been the world. From bags of goatskin to paper cups to whatever comes next, it is individuals’ ingenuity and pragmatic drive to think up something better.
Musing about this brings to mind what is affectionately referred to as The Butterfly Effect, a theory that even some small, seemingly unrelated occurrence can create more significant effects.
Edward Lorenz first put forward this idea by explaining his observations by referencing the flutterings of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world as somehow having an effect on weather patterns or tornados in another part of the world.
Not to infer that the USMCA will only be like the flutterings of a butterfly’s wings! According to the countries involved, it will have sweeping effects and create positive outcomes for manufacturing, business, farming, workers, and the middle class. In that case, it will affect every individual concerned about the above. Perhaps the applications of the USMCA by individuals will broaden entrepreneurial endeavors. As individual entrepreneurs, or workers in a factory, what is done may seem only like the fluttering of a butterfly, but in a kind of communal effect create some significant advances for us all.
Hence a little thinking out loud as we all need to be informed about how these changes could affect where we are along life’s path.
Artists Composite – People of North America look towards what USMCA will mean to them. We all dip our forks into the plates we hope will be filled with good things for us all.
We can no longer sip that figurative cup of coffee in isolation. We must think of what is happening on the other side of the world. Only through keeping informed can we foster the freedoms of the individual and ultimately make the world better for us all.
In a nutshell, what do the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada say about USMCA…
USA
“A new trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would add $68.2 billion to the U.S. economy and create 176,000 new jobs, according to a study from the International Trade Commission released on Thursday. … ‘The model estimates that the agreement would likely positively impact all broad industry sectors within the U.S. economy,’ the [ITC] report says. ‘Manufacturing would experience the largest percentage gains in output, exports, wages, and employment, while in absolute terms, services would experience the largest gains in output and employment.”
Mexico
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was elected in 2018, said about the USMCA, “There’s an agreement, and I took the opportunity to send Mrs. Pelosi a letter explaining that it’s in the interest of the three peoples, the three nations, that this deal is approved.” Mexico is the first of the three countries to ratify the adoption of the USMCA.
Canada
“As a small-business-friendly government, we’re working hard to make it easier for Canadians to do business here at home and abroad. The world wants to buy Canadian goods and services, and the USMCA supports opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses to access the North American market. By supporting small businesses in their efforts to export, we’re helping strengthen the economy and grow the middle class.”– The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion.
“The USMCA is good for Canada’s economy and good for Canada’s middle-class workers and families. It addresses modern-day trade issues and supports prosperity for Canadians by ensuring that our businesses, entrepreneurs, workers, ranchers, farmers, and fishers continue to have preferential access to our largest market.”– The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
It is too early to tell all what USMCA will do for trade in North America or consumers. Online shopping, which grows yearly, may see changes in the sales of goods made in these three countries as more manufacturing comes home.
Buy Products Made in the USA, Made in Mexico, and Made In Canada. This way, it helps jobs stay at home.
