NAFTA renegotiations could impact thousands of border jobs

After months in the making, the renegotiation of NAFTA is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Washington.

While the future of trade in our continent is discussed in the capital, local business leaders have their own hopes for where the discussion will lead.

Thousands of border jobs, millions across the continent, are set to be directly affected with NAFTA’s renegotiation.

Julio Chiu was raised in Juarez, and now lives in El Paso, commuting to work in Juarez every day. He’s the CEO of Seisa Group, a multinational company making medical supplies that employs thousands. Chiu told ABC-7 the outlook was dark at first.

“When this administration took office, and prior to that in the election period, there was certainly a lot of uncertainty,” Chiu said.

Trump had called NAFTA the “worst trade deal ever made” during his campaign rallies. According to the Borderplex Alliance changing or withdrawing from NAFTA wouldn’t only affect Mexico.

“Nearly five to six million American jobs directly rely on trade with Mexico,” said Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance.

As time has gone and talks open up, some business leaders are seeing them as way toward improvement.

“It gives us an opportunity to build on all the positive things, and sure, identify areas where we can and should be doing better, and work on those so we can make it better for the three countries,” Chiu said.

Borderland business leaders say renegotiating NAFTA with local input could open up the 23-year-old trade agreement to be updated, and even gotten ready for future innovation.

“A renegotiated NAFTA could and should create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States,” Barela explained.

One thing that could be done, according to Chiu and Barela would be to tighten the rules of origin, that is,making sure even more material is sourced and produced in North America.

Most of Seisa’s raw material comes from the US, and is processed in Mexico before the finished medical supplies are shipped back north.

“It’s an opportunity for our region to be more a center of innovation, to be a center of design, development,” Chiu said.

A message they hope reaches the halls of Washington DC, Ottawa, and Mexico City.

The future of NAFTA will be one of the topics of discussion in this year’s U.S.-Mexico Border summit starting this Wednesday in El Paso and Thursday in Cd. Juarez.