United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CUELLAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member, Mr. Engel, for yielding to me and also for his leadership in helping to bring this bill to the floor. I thank him and his staff for the wonderful work that they have done. I also thank Chairman Royce and his staff for their leadership. I, with both Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel, spoke a lot about this bill and why it is important that we pass this particular bill.

I thank my colleagues, Representative Castro and Representative Poe, who helped on this bill. I thank them for their work on the committee, and also Representative McCaul for signing on as a bipartisan measure.

In fact, in the next few days, on Friday, Representative McCaul, myself, and a delegation will be going over to Mexico for the swearing in. I think this is a very appropriate time, as Mr. Engel mentioned, to have this bill to send this positive message.

This bill is important in many ways. It is bipartisan legislation that promotes mutual national security interests and economic partnership and cooperation between the United States and Mexico, with a focus on the energy, health, entrepreneurship, and education sectors.

Mexico is one of the United States' top trading partners, with an estimated $615 billion in two-way trade between those two countries, which means that every day there is more than $1.3 billion of trade between the U.S. and Mexico. That means that every single minute you are talking about more than $1 million of trade between the U.S. and Mexico, and this is why it is very important to have this type of relationship.

As the chairman mentioned a few minutes ago, in the 2015-2016 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education, more than 56,000 United States students studied in other countries in the Western Hemisphere, while more than 84,000 non-U.S. students from that region studied in the U.S.

However, there are only 5,000 of those United States students who studied in Mexico, and only 16,000 of those non-U.S. students were from Mexico. This is why we need to do more to increase our educational exchange with our very important trading partner.

Specifically, this bill establishes that it should be the policy of the United States to continue deepening the economic cooperation between the United States and Mexico and to expand the educational and professional exchange programs with our neighbors to the south. In order to do this, it would require the Secretary of State to develop a strategy that:

One, encourages more economic exchanges between the two countries at the secondary, postsecondary, and postgraduate levels, especially with communities in the southern border region;

Two, encourages the United States and Mexican academic institutions and businesses to collaborate to train aspiring entrepreneurs;

Three, promotes energy infrastructure coordination and cooperation through the support of vocational education, internships, and exchanges between both countries; and

Four, assesses the feasibility of fostering binational partnerships between universities and medical school and nursing programs, and that is a natural fit that we can do with that particular neighbor to the south.

So, again, if we increase economic exchanges at universities that we have in Texas and across California and New Mexico and Arizona and other parts, that basically means that we will better prepare our students for success in the workplace and increase job opportunities for those areas and the small businesses along the border.

Again, to conclude, I thank the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman Ed Royce. He is very passionate about Mexico, and I thank him for that passion.

I thank Ranking Member Eliot Engel again. He is very passionate. I think this is something that we feel is very important about Mexico, and I thank him for advancing this bill through the committee.

And, again, to the staff, both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side, I thank them.

So, to conclude, I encourage my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation, and I look forward to seeing this bill pass into law.

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