Chad Smith, NAFB News Service

A judge with the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down a sugar trade pact between the U.S. and Mexico that was renegotiated by the Trump Administration in 2017. Nasdaq Dot Com says the judge ruled the decision to amend a previous agreement between the two nations was unlawful. Specifically, Judge Leo M. Gordon says the U.S. Commerce Department’s determination to amend an agreement that suspended U.S. countervailing duties on Mexican sugar imports was unlawful. The Trump Administration’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, had redone the 2014 trade deal, which some U.S. companies said had curtailed their sugar supplies. Trump said on Twitter back in 2017 that the agreement was “a very good one for both Mexico and the U.S.” A U.S. sugar company had challenged the 2017 amended agreement, alleging that competitors were using the trade talks to deny it access to cheap Mexican sugar imports. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s failure to maintain full records of all its meetings cannot be described as “harmless,” the judge said in his ruling. The decision will revert sugar trade terms between the U.S. and Mexico back to the 2014 agreement, and it marks a blow to the Trump Administration by overturning its very first trade agreement.