U.S. Senator Katie Britt Calls for Action to Hold Mexico Accountable 

Decries WSJ report of Biden Administration secretly renegotiating USMCA

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 20, 2024 – U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) today spoke on the Senate floor with Senators Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) advocating on behalf of American companies, specifically Birmingham-based Vulcan Materials Company, to ensure the U.S. does not stand idly by as foreign governments trample on U.S. citizens and interests.

Vulcan Materials Company is attempting to regain access to their deepwater port and facilities in Quintana Roo, Mexico, which was unlawfully ceased and then expropriated by the Mexican government. Instead of going after the cartels, Mexico went after law-abiding Americans. Senator Britt is working to protect American companies from an all-out assault on the rule of law.

Her full remarks can be viewed HERE or by clicking the above image.

Select excerpts from her remarks are below:

“Time and time again over the past four years bad actors across the globe have poked and prodded at the United States because they saw weakness in the White House. They saw they could do it and get away with it. And when they did, without even the slightest bit of response, let alone without consequences, they just kept doing it . . .  

“The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial citing sources stating the administration has undergone last-minute backroom negotiations on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

The changes, the Journal reported, would rob American companies like Vulcan of the protections they’ve relied on when investing in partner countries. … The Biden Administration and its U.S. Trade Representatives are actively undermining American interests. They’re leaving American companies out in the cold, without consulting Congress, preventing us from exercising our constitutional duty to provide oversight on trade. The Biden Administration’s actions should be a front-page story in every newspaper across this nation. The idea that a sitting president and/or his administration would be working against the interest of the country and/or the people that he was elected to serve is absolutely unacceptable.” 

“I am proud in the interim to support … Senator Bill Hagerty’s piece of legislation. It’s called (the) Defending American Property Abroad Act. I joined this quickly alongside Senators [John] Barrasso, [Ted] Budd, Kaine, and Tuberville, and [Roger] Wicker. It would prohibit the Mexican government from profiting from its unlawful seizures of Vulcan property and port facility.”

“This past November, the American people did not choose decline. We chose renewal. We must begin to reassert ourselves and make sure that no country— not Mexico, not anyone else —can get away with the seizures like the one that the Mexican government carried out against Vulcan. American interests, American families, American values, Americans’ securities must come first.”

Background:

Vulcan Materials Company is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2018, Vulcan initiated a NAFTA arbitration against Mexico in response to harassment, illegal land-use changes, and the unlawful shutdown of operations on a portion of Vulcan’s property in Quintana Roo. In May 2022, Vulcan’s production and port operations at the property were fully shut down using Mexican military force on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) orders.

On March 14, 2023, Vulcan Materials Company’s port facility at Punta Venado in Quintana Roo, Mexico, was breached and confiscated at gunpoint by Mexican military and police forces. Senator Britt called out the unlawful, unacceptable seizure at the time. She then helped lead a bipartisan letter to the Ambassador of Mexico to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma, regarding the militarized seizure of the property. Following a meeting between Alabama’s congressional delegation and Ambassador Moctezuma, it was announced that Mexican forces withdrew from the property.

Following that invasion, AMLO continued to threaten to forcibly take over Vulcan’s port and limestone quarry, forcing their operations out of Mexico, despite the company’s consistent presence in Mexico for more than 35 years.

In May 2024, Senators Britt, Kaine, Hagerty, and Tuberville wrote Alicia Bárcena, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, marking the two-year anniversary of the initial militarized shutdown of the property and urging the Government of Mexico “to reverse the actions taken against Vulcan and work towards a beneficial solution for all parties involved.”

In September 2024, Senators Britt, Hagerty, Kaine, Tuberville, Ted Budd (R-N.C.), and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) introduced the Defending American Property Abroad Act, which would impose retaliatory prohibitions against the Government of Mexico if it attempts to profit from the pending seizure of Vulcan Materials Company’s property and port facility in Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Full text of the Defending American Property Abroad Act can be found here.

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