The Honorable Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury
The Honorable Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce
The Honorable Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security
The Honorable Robert Lighthizer, United States Trade Representative
The Honorable Larry Kudlow, Director, National Economic Council
The Honorable Kevin Hassett, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
On behalf of the CEO members of Business Roundtable who lead companies with more than 15 million employees and $7.5 trillion in revenues, we support efforts to modernize our immigration system by improving security to keep our nation safe and ensuring reliable pathways for legal immigrants to contribute to our communities. We encourage Congress and the Administration to work together to fix our immigration system.
We write to voice our serious concerns, however, regarding executive actions that would shutdown, partially shutdown or significantly slow commerce at the U.S.-Mexico border, any of which would significantly harm American workers, businesses, farmers and consumers.
According to a recently released Business Roundtable study, nearly 5 million American jobs depend on two-way trade with Mexico. Last year, the U.S. and Mexico traded over $610 billion in goods. Over $1.5 billion in goods cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day, with the vast majority crossing through U.S. land ports of entry.
Shutting down the U.S-Mexico border or slowing cross-border trade would severely damage the operations of American businesses and hurt American workers. Closing the border would back up thousands of trucks, impact billions of dollars of goods each day, cripple supply chains and stall U.S. manufacturing and business activity.
Even the threat of a border closure injects significant uncertainty for American companies who depend on legal workers who cross the border each day to operate their businesses. Instead, we urge the Administration to keep U.S. land ports of entry open to legal commerce to support U.S. economic growth and competitiveness.
The U.S. has made strong economic progress in the last year, with American workers and businesses benefiting from the Administration’s tax and regulatory reform policies. But slowing commerce at the border would put that progress at risk.
Sincerely,
Joshua Bolten
President & CEO
Business Roundtable