Description of Episode:  This week’s episode covers the latest issues in cross-border trade between Texas and Mexico. Texas-based Customs Broker Adrian Gonzalez of Global Alliance Solutions helps break down the current state of supply chain disruptions, Title 42, the Summit of the Americas, and the future of international commerce between the United States and Mexico.

Olga Torres: Thank you for joining the Torres Talks Trade podcast. My name is Olga Torres and I'm the managing member of Torres Trade Law, a national security and international trade law firm. Today we have with us Adrian Gonzalez, he's the president of Global Alliance Solutions, a firm in McAllen, Texas that specializes in US and Mexico customs brokerage services, warehousing and distribution, as well as consulting and compliance services in Mexico and the United States. Adrian, welcome.

Adrian Gonzalez: Hi Olga, how are you? Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Olga Torres: Thank you for being here. You are our third podcast. Can you believe that

Adrian Gonzalez: Awesome, yes.

Olga Torres: yes. And the best one yet.

Adrian Gonzalez: Oh, that's amazing. Thank you.

Olga Torres: So today we're gonna be chatting it's it's really interesting. And having you, it's, it's gonna be really important to, to our listeners, I think because of your strategic location we're gonna be chatting about the recent disruption in trade between Texas and Mexico. As a result of you know, the Texas governor basically implemented a policy that required the department of public safety to inspect commercial vehicles coming from Mexico into Texas. And it affected three Mexican states. Well, yeah, three Mexican states. I think that's where they signed the, the memorandum of understanding with, with those three states in Mexico.

And so we have a lot of questions for you from a boots on the ground perspective. How are people reacting in Mexico in the US, and especially at the border and specifically the, the whole point of this is what can companies do in the future? Should this happen again? What would be the best thing? How, how do they navigate it?

So that's gonna be really critical to, to understand. But I guess we can start with, just tell us a little bit about your background, the work you do, your consulting services. Just give us more information.

Adrian Gonzalez: Sure, Olga. Thank you. Well I started my career in Mexico. I worked for a Mexican exporter in the steel industry and then as years progressed, I decided to come back to the US. And I started working for a US customs broker and during that time my previous, that employer at the time gave me the, the challenge of becoming a US custom broker. And then I became a US custom broker and I really liked the, the profession. I had a passion for, for this, for trade, for service. I don't know why, but I like it. You know, I think you'll agree with me. And then I work for that's right. And then I work for a multinational corporation as a trade compliance manager. And then, in September of 2020, right in the, in the pandemic, I decided to start my own firm, my US customs brokerage firm.

Olga Torres: That must have been interesting to start in, in the midst of COVID that's an entire different conversation, but that that's interesting.

Adrian Gonzalez: Well, a lot of people, including myself, I guess we reviewed our life, right. Our objectives, what we wanted. And, and I said, well, it's now or ever. And, and of course it was a hard time and still it's a hard time, but you know, I think we, there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of things to do a lot of work and, and, and hopefully more so in, in the future. So we just took the plunge, right? Just the leap of faith, right.

Olga Torres: Yeah, very good. Very good. So, so tell us about specifically this, you know, let's call it the, you know, what should we call it? The, the border..

Adrian Gonzalez: disrupt, the Abbott disruptions, or is it too political? Maybe.

Olga Torres: You know, the, the, this disruption, I suppose, or the inspections that were conducted. What was, what was the effect, the, what happened after? I mean, and I'm assuming things are back to normal.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes

Olga Torres: But it lasted for what, like a week or so.

Adrian Gonzalez: A week, The, the week of hell we, we, we remember it. So, yeah, so basically what happened is that there was this co and, and our colleagues and I, the US customer broker association, and other colleagues in transportation, we were just talking about how we, we, we, as an association don’t want to get into politics.

Olga Torres: Right, right.

Adrian Gonzalez: But then we found ourselves in the middle of politics because this started and this was a political issue, a political disagreement between the state of Texas and the federal government. That was the origin of the, of the issuing these right?

Olga Torres: In the US, the Biden administration.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes. Yes. So, what happened is that the Biden administration announced the end of title 42. Which then Olga you may know more about this then no is still another, judge stopped that. Right. But we at, at that time, it was announced it would be going to end at the, at the end of May and there was, this was at the beginning of April, right? So just so we, we, we to ourselves in the timeline there and for

Olga Torres: Yeah and for people that may not know what title 42 is because I and I have to admit it I'm a trade lawyer. I, I was like title 42 doesn't ring any trade bells or anything like that. So anyway, we looked it up it's a public emergency health order. So it was aimed at preventing the spread of diseases in the United States. It was used a lot throughout COVID and I'm assuming that now it's not required because COVID appears to be more under control. So I think that's why.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah, so that, that was implemented by the Trump administration and that enabled CBP to ask asylum seekers to go back to Mexico and follow their cases in Mexico. So, and the reason was to prevent the, the, the spread of COVID 19, right. So that's, and, and we have a, there's a huge immigration problem, right?

I mean, I'm not an expert in that, but we here at the border, we don't feel it in, in McAllen and we don't have issues in the streets or anything of that, like that sort. But as we cross into Reynosa we see a lot of people there and there are a lot of issues and so people are concerned about that, right. So in as the Biden Administration announced that the end of the title 42 the governor Abbott announced that he was going to do enhanced inspections to address what the federal government was not addressing. So he stated, right.

So we've heard of that and we, in the community, we were like, well, what is this going to be about? Right, because even if that's a big issue and people have different opinions, we do know that in commercial shipments, there's no immigrants. I mean, the immigrants, they don't, they don't go in into the, in the middle of avocados and lemons or in automotive parts across through the U.S.

It doesn't happen. Right? I mean, it's, at least it's not an issue. They cross through the Rio, grand the river, and then they find we way to to north of the country. And that, I mean, that's separate, right. We, we didn't want to get into the, the the validation or, or not of that. Right. I mean, we just wanted to do our work.

Right, right. But then realized that he asked Texas DPS to do enhanced inspections before they used to check 3% of the trucks coming in. Now that we're checking a hundred percent of the trucks, my gosh, 40 to 45 minutes per truck, Olga, so, as you can imagine that collapsed trade for a certain ports of entry only.

Olga Torres: And so what, what all of the ports of entry basically in Texas, right? It, it impacted?

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes. Yes. But interestingly, and, and that was what we thought was so unfair is that depending on where the Texas DPS station were, some port entries were affected some weren't for example, here as DPS’s right, right outside the, the import lab from CBP, it's the same line of trucks it goes through the same path. So when DPS started doing that, they stopped the whole line. So everything going all the way to Mexico. For the Pharr bridge, for example, for the Laredo Colombia, but for example, for the Laredo world trade bridge, which is the largest in the state, that didn't happen because the, the, the position of the Texas DPS station was somewhere else, something like that.

So the biggest port that crosses 10,000 trucks a day, they didn't have any disruptions and we locally that cross to two, 2,500 trucks a day everything's stops. So as you can see, this was this very bad, very unfair situation in reality. And, and, and we, after we started discussing with local leaders, we realized it was, this was a hundred percent political.

Olga Torres: Right, right. Yeah. Well, we, we did some research, you know, in preparation for the podcast and we were trying to figure out after the inspections, was there any announcement of any, of any sort, you know, regarding what was found? Were there any, nothing, I dunno, you could think like maybe drugs or, you know, migrants or anything.

Adrian Gonzalez: Nada [“nothing” in Spanish].

Olga Torres: And we couldn't find, we couldn't find anything that's yeah. Now that we couldn't find anything. So, you know, there may be something coming up later, but so far we couldn't find anything and then I think also just to kind of highlight for people that may not be as familiar with Texas. Texas has been ranked number one exporter in the whole country for 20 consecutive years. Just alone, Texas exports in 2020 accounted for more than California and New York combined. So a, a very, you know, large port of entry, very large state and Mexico being our I, I don't know if Mexico is Texas's largest trading partner. I'm pretty sure of that.

Adrian Gonzalez: Should be.

Olga Torres: So a lot of trade and it sounds like this situation, which appears to be more political than trade related, but it impacted trade.

Adrian Gonzalez: And, and that's why it, it caught us by surprise because we take a lot of pride. We know that even the governor takes a lot of pride in all the businesses that are coming into the state. He promotes the state and, and we agree with him. Well, we, we live here in Texas, right? So we, we definitely do. We like it here. Right? I mean, we, we like how we do business here. So that was what caught us by surprise that he made the decision that was seemed to be so against what he was promoting for the State of Texas, right. For the state of Texas, Texas. So Texas. Yeah.

In, in terms of the ease of doing business, the, the trade of all of that. And then we saw this and this was just, you know, we just didn't understand. I mean, we finally understood why, right, politic politics. But at that, at that, at the beginning, we just didn't understand what was going on.

Olga Torres: Yeah and I I've heard some, some figures in terms of what was lost. Right. Cause I mean, for people, if you don't, if you think about it, you think, well it's only one week how bad can it be? But I I've heard great, you know, crazy numbers in terms of agricultural products, like produce that got destroyed. And, and in a variety of other items that, you know, you need to move quickly and I don't have the, I thought I had him from our research, like some of the numbers in terms of how much money was lost over that period, even though it was just again one week. So, so what is the so consensus, I think in the trade community is not, you know, it, it was too political, it impacted trade, it was unnecessary. Nothing really was found, at least nothing has been announced. How, how is how's the feeling on the other side of the border? I, I saw for example, announcements by the three Mexican states that met, you know, the governor's meeting with Abbott and Governor Abbott and signing memorandum of understanding. And, and just like the U.S. Mexico, you know, state level politicians and the federal level. I I've heard some discrepancies between the border states where they moved quickly to sign the memorandums of understanding. And if you haven't seen them, I actually looked one up and it's pretty vague. I'm not sure exactly what those governors are doing.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah.

Olga Torres: You know, and whether we can trust that, that they're doing what they're saying they're doing. But then I also heard that from, from, from a federal perspective, Mexico wasn’t too happy.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah, they weren’t.

Olga Torres: And you know, what's your sense for that?

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah, so basically, and then going back to what you were saying, a lot of people don't realize that the rhythm of trade is like that. Things need to cross, like right now, right. And then what we, and, and we have an interesting mix here, which in, in which half and, and half and half is pretty much a produce, a perishable commodities and the other half is usually maquiladora type automotive parts and, and such right.

So the perishable commodities, they need to cross fast. If not, they get spoiled pretty much. So they they're useless, right. And on the other side, an automotive commodities, for example, they don't get spoiled, but they need to go into a vehicle. So, and, and, and plans don't wait.

Olga Torres: Right, and we already have supply chain issues as it is exactly. I don't want to be adding anything else.

Adrian Gonzalez: So, so reports say, and, and the numbers, you know, and, and, and people have different numbers, but they're easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. I, I think I trust that numbers. I mean, I think that's definitely true. Some some quantities say over a billion. I mean, I don't know, right. But it's, it's, it's a lot.

Olga Torres: Yeah those were the numbers we were seeing. I mean, it, how do we verify the numbers? Yeah, exactly. So it's unclear. But it definitely had an impact for sure.

Adrian Gonzalez: And then, and also talking about these states was saying four states, you know, and it was Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, which is just a small, a small little slipper if you look at the map. But Nuevo Leon was involved as well and Chihuahua, so those four states.

Olga Torres: I know, because I looked up the governor of Nuevo Leon.

Adrian Gonzalez: Nuevo Leon was the first one.

Olga Torres: He looks so young.

Adrian Gonzalez: He's young, younger than me. Yes, he's like, yeah.

Olga Torres: He looks like a little baby.

Adrian Gonzalez: 36, 35, yeah he's he's young. Yeah.

Olga Torres: Yeah. And he looks too, you know, like sometimes you look older, even that he looks like the baby, you know, I looked at it at Governor Abbotts and then I looked at the and I'm what, what is he the governor? Anyway, unrelated to that, sorry for the commentary. So, so, so you're saying, in terms of the reaction on those Mexican states, do you think that there's a difference between, so the federal government and those Mexican states?

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah, so basically what, and, and, and I think for political purposes, this governors realized that once the governor, once governor Abbott announced that he wanted MOU’s they said, okay, let's sign them. And I, I, I think they thought for political purposes that because we, as the user were saying, sign it, but I mean, we, we don't want, we don't want politics, right. Again, as I said none of us want to get into that. We have our opinions, but we don't wanna project that into the work we do because we don't believe it's related, right.

Olga Torres: right.

Adrian Gonzalez: So they signed them. So they didn't declare, we they all say, yeah, we're for it and, and all of that, I mean, it was all very political, very, very, you know everything. Now, but once you looked at the federal level, we look at Marcelo Ebrard the Minister of Foreign Relations, I believe that's that's his position. He said that this was extortion, right? That, what the governor government of Texas did was extorted Mexican states to extract agreements in, in not the, the best way possible, right. And, and, you know, I, I tend to agree, right. I mean, that was the situation. They had no choice. Right? I mean, it's not like, yeah, let's talk. I mean, we, and, and us users in the U.S. and Mexico border, we didn't give them a choice, said you need to sign because it was very bad, Olga. So we needed to get stuff across and, and it became just like that, Hey, just please sign that, sign it. I mean, and not that it, it doesn't have merit, not that the issue don't need to be addressed. I mean, we're not saying that right. I mean, of course it is an issue, it needs to be addressed, but just the way that it was brought, brought up, I mean, it was not the best way I think we cannot agree with that, right.

Olga Torres: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't really solving the issue. I, I don't think right. I, I guess that's a, that's a fair question. Like what was accomplished after that? I guess they signed a MOU’s.

Adrian Gonzalez: So technically they're gonna help, not, so what the governor said, hey, I don't want immigrants to get to the border pretty much, that was the sense I got. And so the, the Mexican states agreed to monitor, to have checkpoints in which they're going to check and see that the immigrants don't get and that the control, the adequate and all that. And just right today, I heard that there was the largest caravan being formed in the Southern Mexico.

So maybe that will be put to the test. I mean, I don't even wanna say it, but hopefully we're not, we don't get again into this type of issues about enhance inspections and such first, because we know that they don't, they do not address the issue, right.

Olga Torres: Right.

Adrian Gonzalez: But it is an issue, right. I mean, we do have a problem that that needs to be addressed. I mean, do we, and we know that right.

Olga Torres: Right. It, it, to me like the, playing devil's advocate that the idea is we are seeing, this is gonna be a problem coming, right? The another wave and what do I do from a very, you know, we don't have the federal government, right? I'm a governor in a state, in, in the U.S. How can I exert some kind of pressure on again at the government governor level, even within Mexico, that's gonna be really interesting to watch whether they can actually do anything, cuz Mexico has all sorts of state versus federal and you know, the same federalism issues that we would have here. Right. So that's gonna be interesting. And whether, if they actually cannot stop it, like let's say Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon they are not able to contain the wave and whether that could lead to more disruptions.

Adrian Gonzalez: Well, exactly, and that, that, that takes us to the, the point that we were discussing with importers and Mexican exporters about that they need to be ready in case this happens again and any disruptions. Now we are sure there's going to be a disruption. We don't know what type it could be a a weather event, it could be a pandemic, another pandemic or, or another variant of COVID 19, or it can be this right. But what we were discussing with all of our customers and contacts and, and the different association is in, in a few words, we need to be ready and we need to be planned for, for everything, right.

Olga Torres: And how, how do you think people should be preparing maybe importing now in advance and keeping more inventory on this side? Or, or what do you, I mean, we know that there's a new way of forming, right. And it's already, so how do we, how do we get ahead of that, just in case?

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah. So that's a, that's a, that's a strategy that companies actually are taking because as, as you mentioned we are already coming from severe disruptions, right. So companies are much more focused on resilience, right. And, and that's, we're seeing that so yes, increase of inventories. That's, that's a measure that our companies start implementing. Many companies don't want to do that because that, that increased cost as well.

Olga Torres: Right.

Adrian Gonzalez: So we know, we are very focused on costs, but even, you know, a Secretary of Commerce yesterday said resilience cost money. So maybe a lot of companies were saying, we will need to invest more, but this what we need to do in this new environment. Now, so that inventory is one thing, right? The other is that we're talking to our, our customer says make sure that you have different providers. You have a diversification in your options in your supply chain, you have more than one bridge, more than one

Olga Torres: More coming from other states. That's actually a really good question that I just thought of. So we're seeing this only happen in Texas. So what's the impact? We, we, we received criticism from the Mexican federal government, right. you know, calling a governor extortionist seems pretty strong wording there.

Adrian Gonzalez: He used extortion, right? So that's what he said.

Olga Torres: So can Mexico, for example, say, well, you know, we're not gonna risk it. We're gonna start using New Mexico or some other states? Cause I heard something about I guess it was the corridor that there.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes, the T-MEC corridor. I believe it's a rail, a rail rail, infrastructure project. Yes. Well, that's what they said, they're gonna not use Texas, they're going to use New Mexico. So apparent that was in direct retaliation for, for this. Right, and so yes, we could see those type of issues and and, and we realize that here as well. And, and, and we always tell this to our local leaders, regional leaders, state leaders, importers have options. They don't have to use our port. They don't have to use our state. They can use other ports. They can use different supply chain routes, right.

Olga Torres: And we don’t want that.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes, and we don't want that. We don't want it because that's our work and, and we custom brokers we can do entries, you know, nationwide, but still we live here, we want to our resource to develop. So our, our message is always, let's not assume that people have to use this port or have to use us or have to be here. They don't, importers don't right. They can use other, other port. And that's our concern, right? That, that all these political issues, will have importers, use other ports, right. And, and, and, and, and not invest as much as they would in, in our region. If, if they thought that they had the certainty, that their products will come across.

Olga Torres: Yeah, and that puts us in a, in a tough spot actually, right. If we do it again here from Texas, because we're so proud of being number one, exporter which is in, in, in many ways, facilitated by Mexico, you know, buying a lot of our exports. right. I, I, I, I mean, to me, it was crazy the numbers that we had you know, more than California, New York combined, right. And our number one customer is Mexico. So, it's gonna be interesting to see if there's any other ways we can exert some pressure, but that is now using trade and commerce and impact in us businesses at the end of the day, right.

Adrian Gonzalez: Well, Olga, I'm sure you've seen this recently that the last few years, it seems that trade has become the first weapon or the first re, use of any conflict worldwide. Right, right before didn't in many

Olga Torres: And it's always been supposed to, you know, trade and let's say economic sanctions and export controls, they, they are a foreign policy tool, right? Sometimes we don't wanna go to war. We exert pressure through trade, but in cases like Mexico and even China, we we've been following China very closely especially after Russia, just because, you know, when you are trading so much with someone, if you want to use trade to hurt them, it kind of hurts you too. Exactly

Adrian Gonzalez: Exactly right. And that's what we're seeing.

Olga Torres: So's yeah, that's exactly where we are with, with, we will be in that position if we,

Adrian Gonzalez: And if you remember Olga, we also, well, I mean, in my opinion, this, this what happened with, with this disruptions reminded me of the threat from the Donald Trump administration of the 5% additional duties in all Mexican imports. Do you remember that? That was years back. It was exactly, and it, it did work. I mean, he did not implement it, so we did not feel the pain, but we did saw that the Mexican government change and, and, and they put checkpoints at the Southern of of Southern of Mexico and, and, and it worked. So I, I, I don't know. I mean, but I kind of think that maybe governor said, well, we need kind of this strategies that again, we were, we wish we didn't have to be in the middle of it, right.

Olga Torres: Right, yeah, exactly. So it it's something that we're gonna be monitoring closely. So I, I digressed a little bit, sorry. So you were talking about, you know, maybe more warehousing diversifying suppliers, you know, maybe potentially diversifying the states and ports of entry, I would think, right.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes. I mean, definitely.

Olga Torres: As much as it pains me because we love Texas and we are in Texas, but that's potentially something people should be exploring.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yeah and then different ports in Texas, right. And as we saw in this event, there was ports that was not disrupted at all, right. So if, if importers have a strategy of saying, well, I, I have my preferred port because that's, that's normal, right. But I'm ready to use another port several ports in case I need to, that's a good strategy. What goes behind that, of course is having suppliers, that can use other ports because we customs brokers, we don't have issues with ports, right? We have a national permit, we can do all the entries and any anywhere. But Mexican brokers, for example, they have a limit in the amount of ports in which they can file pedimento, right. Or, or export pedimentos. So that could be an issue for exporters importers, right? Another is carriers, right. A carrier say, you know what, I don't use that route because of safety or I don't know how to, I mean, I just don't do right. I do this. Right. So importers need to also look at other carriers or come to an agreement with their carriers, right. And, and have a, a, a proven worked out a contingency plan, right. We have customers that they say, you know, my preferred port is Laredo, but I'm also going to use Pharr, it's gonna be a smaller warehouse, gonna be a smaller operation, but I'm going to use it, use it regularly in case something happens, I'm ready to divert more or less volume, depending on what I need to do. That is the best practice, right. That, that is the best way to approach it.

Olga Torres: It probably will be especially, I'm thinking for things like agricultural products, right? Like, I don't think you can really store that in inventory as such, I guess you could freeze it. But I think like having different ports is gonna be one of the most critical ones I would think.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes. And, and overall, I mean, you know, there's many different commodities, but usually produce shipments they're sold even before they get to they cross the United States. So, so that is a very dynamic fast industry and automotive and Maquiladora type as well. So, so yes, I mean that, that's the challenge, right? I mean, there's this expectation that trade that the truck needs to cross regardless right now and, and we have that expectation and we want to maintain it, right. But also as we speak to our customer, we say you shouldn't anticipate that maybe every now and then you're gonna have a, a small disruption here or there. Are you ready? Right. Can, can you comply with your customer's orders, even if you don't, you're not able to cross a cross a truck today. Can you do that? Do you have the, and, and that goes back to what you mentioned, Olga inventory levels. I, it, it, to, to us here at the border, that is the, the, the significance and that is a major, major aspect of it, right? Because as companies want to reduce cost, they reduce inventory levels of raw materials and of finished goods, but that has their consequences. And we saw it with COVID 19, right. We saw how we needed masks. We need PPE and then suddenly we don't have them, right. Because we used to this low-level inventories and now apparently they're a changing how we feel that should be addressed right over generally.

Olga Torres: Right, I guess, and, and, and to close it, this is what really, really helpful to close it out. I read in the news that the President of Mexico had declined the invitation to attend the Summit of the Americas. Do you think any of this could have had any, I, I think that he cited different reasons, I think that not all the countries in the America were invited.

Adrian Gonzalez: Yes, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela were not invited. So he said I'm not going to.

Olga Torres: But I thought it was a very strong position, right. From, from one of our closest allies and one of our largest Mexico is the U.S second largest trading partner. You know, I, I thought it was a, an interesting posture.

Adrian Gonzalez: What I, what I, what I think is that we have a great opportunity with what's going on worldwide, right? We see this new confrontation states, China, and this willingness and openness from the U.S. to say, we can have we want our allies, Mexico and other countries to handle more for supply chain. So that's a, that's an amazing opportunity, I think, right. In terms of everything that we can do, right. We should approach that with efficiency, with competitive and cost, right. Because we don't want to help inflation, right. We got enough of that already. So we want to be efficient with that.

When I see this type of issues from AMLO (Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) and, you know, again, politics, I don't wanna get too much into that, but I say, you know what? Can't we just, you know, come to an agreement and work together and, and, and, and, and, and use this opportunity as we should, right. Hopefully wouldn't wanna situation where,

Olga Torres: That’s exactly how I felt.

Adrian Gonzalez: Where, oh, well because there's a framework for Latin America coming sooner. I'm sure you heard of that Olga and well, we want the business here. Right? We don't want, I mean, we want it for everybody, right. But we want to project our region, project our countries and, and capitalize on this great opportunity and not see it go somewhere else. I mean, if we can do it right. So that's, that's my feeling here. I think he should have been there. And, and I, I believe, you know, he has a disagreement, he should voice it out. I mean, and, and that's, that's politics right, that's diplomacy and, and resolve it, right. So that's what us citizens, I would like to see, I mean, we either right, come to an agreement, right. Leaders get together, come to an agreement and, and, and benefit the, the countries, right?

Olga Torres: Yeah. I, I agree with you. I think it was a missed opportunity by AMLO. So I thought that was unfortunate too. Don't wanna get too into politics, but, you know, as we traders.

Adrian Gonzalez: Unfortunately, it’s a lot of politics.

Olga Torres: Yeah. well thank you so much for joining and thanks for listeners for tuning in. We'll get you more information next week on additional USMCA, and, and Mexico matters. Thank you so much and, and thank you, Adrian for, for joining us today.

Adrian Gonzalez: It's my pleasure Olga. Thank you for the invitation. We'll keep in touch and, and thanks again to everybody that's that's listening. Thank you.

Olga Torres: Thank you.