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Floor Speech
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Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, I am here today to discuss worrying developments in Mexico, one of the United States' most important international partners and our neighbor to the south.
The nearly 2,000-mile border that our nations share both binds us together and presents a series of challenges, including illegal migration, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. As we work through those difficult issues, our robust economic relationship has provided a firm foundation to strengthen and stabilize our efforts with an eye toward the future. The innovative United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, deepened the connections between our economies such that Mexico is now one of our largest and most strategic trading partners.
However, actions over the past 2 years by the government of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have weakened that bond and are threatening the economic and diplomatic ties between our nations. Through increasingly arbitrary and aggressive moves against companies based here in the United States and their lawfully owned assets in Mexico, the Mexican Government has abused its permitting and regulatory powers in ways that violate the letter and the spirit of our trade agreements, not to mention the special relationship historically enjoyed between our two countries. These decisions directly impact critical sectors of the U.S. economy from agriculture to energy and mining and from transportation to tourism.
These capricious actions, which are falsely labeled as ``reforms,'' risk substantially undermining confidence in the commercial rule of law in Mexico. They also jeopardize the essential economic relations between North American partners. Further, these actions likely violate our trade agreements by abrogating contracts, stripping investors of value, and eliminating private competition and oversight, thereby sending a clear message to U.S. capital markets that Mexico is no longer safe or profitable for investing.
I want to highlight the specific case of Vulcan Materials. For almost 2 years now, President Lopez Obrador has personally harassed, interfered with, and obstructed Vulcan's lawful operations in Mexico.
Vulcan is a U.S.-based construction aggregates company with a strong Tennessee and, I might add, a strong Virginia presence that has more than a 30-year track record of responsibly operating in Mexico and investing in the community that surrounds its Mexican facility.
In May of 2022, President Lopez Obrador ordered the illegal shutdown of Vulcan's operations, which had an immediate and detrimental impact on the supply of construction aggregates to the United States.
Then, in March of 2023, President Lopez Obrador ordered a military invasion of Vulcan's property and occupied the company's quarry and port for 2 weeks. As shocking as this sounds, video footage of this invasion is available online.
President Lopez Obrador has initiated a process to illegally take the company's property by declaring it a supposed naturally protected area.
The President of Mexico is abusing a process designed to protect regionwide ecosystems in order to illegally expropriate land that, coincidentally, exactly matches Vulcan's property lines. This is an egregious abuse of the law that undermines the very trust that should be foundational to the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
By illegally closing Vulcan's business and now attempting to steal their property, the Mexican President is signaling to other American companies that Mexico cannot be trusted when it comes to foreign investment.
If not quickly corrected, actions like these risk choking off the economic relationship between our two nations.
Many important supply chains stretch across the U.S.-Mexico border, supplying millions of good jobs and making both countries more attractive for capital investment.
This is certainly true for my home State of Tennessee. Because of the successes that I witnessed between my home State of Tennessee and Mexico, I have been a strong advocate for reshoring integrated supply chains from Communist China to North America.
Building upon the successes of USMCA as a foundational component of North American competitiveness supports both American and Mexican economic prosperity and both nations' national security.
But without a basic respect for private property and the rule of law, the prospects for expanding our shared economic and national security via commerce and investment are greatly diminished.
In fact, failing to protect private property and the rule of law will inevitably lead to the disintegration of our economic ties. Therefore, I again urge President Lopez Obrador to reverse course before more damage is done.
Instead, we should be looking for opportunities to work together to attract investment and unlock the economic opportunity that is being presented to both of our nations as supply chains are rebalanced away from communist China.
Let's seize this opportunity together rather than damage our shared interests for short-term political gains.
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Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kaine for lending his expertise as a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, most importantly, as chair of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. I thank the Senator from Virginia for bringing his respected voice to this matter of serious diplomatic concern. As former Governor of his home State of Virginia, he has an acute appreciation of the economic opportunity that exists that is in danger of being destroyed by the illegal actions of the Mexican President. So thank you very much for joining me in this.
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