Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador receives the applause of the crowd during a rally in Tijuana, Mexico, Saturday, June 8, 2019. Mexican President Andres Lopez Obrador held the rally in Tijuana even as President Trump has put on hold his plan to begin imposing tariffs on Mexico on Monday, saying the U.S. ally will take “strong measures” to reduce the flow of Central American migrants into the United States. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)Mexico’s Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to ratify a new free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, making it the first of the three countries to gain legislative approval.
Mexico’s upper chamber voted 114 to four with three abstentions in favor of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement which U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to withdraw from the United States did not get a better deal.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a recorded message that the vote was “very good news.”
“It means foreign investment in Mexico, it means jobs in Mexico, it means guaranteeing trade of the merchandise that we produce in the United States,” he said.
The United States is by far Mexico’s biggest export market and there was little opposition in the legislature to the deal. The approval came after Trump vowed to impose tariffs on all Mexican goods if López Obrador didn’t reduce the flow of U.S.-bound illegal immigration from Central America.