Cornyn on U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty Compliance in USMCA Review
February 12, 2026
CORNYN: ‘Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Rollins, now I think we're in a better place than we were in terms of delivery of water to our South Texas farmers, but how can the U.S. use the USMCA joint review process to help reinforce compliance?’
BRADY: ‘This is an opportunity to work with the administration to make sure that their commitments are being kept, that this is being enforced across the board.’
WASHINGTON – During today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) questioned former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (TX-8) on how America can use the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) joint review process to push Mexico to comply with the 1944 Water Treaty. This comes after Sen. Cornyn last month urged United States Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer to bring up the ongoing water treaty issue during USMCA joint review. Excerpts are below, and video can be found here.
CORNYN: “In 1944, the United States and Mexico entered into a water treaty. The enforcement of that has been fraught with problems and resulted in tremendous hardship and loss of jobs in the Rio Grande Valley.”
“Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Rollins, now I think we’re in a better place than we were in terms of delivery of water to our South Texas farmers, but how can the U.S. use the USMCA joint review process to help reinforce compliance and accountability with Mexico to help safeguard these South Texas agricultural jobs?”
BRADY: “Senator, thank you for your leadership on that water treaty. This has been an issue that has been troubling for Texas for decades. Your leadership, along with Senator Cruz and our congressional delegation…to see now Mexico stepping forward on an agreement to both unleash that water to Texas, pay back what is owed in the past, working with the administration, I can’t tell you how important that is to our state.”
“This is an opportunity to work with the administration to make sure that their commitments are being kept, that this is being enforced across the board. It’s an opportunity to improve it as well, working with Mexico and Canada in a whole range of areas and making sure the agreement itself is working for Texas workers and manufacturers, farmers, and it is.”
“It’s an opportunity to go beyond that to improve the agreement, certainly for Texas, economic security, transshipments from China, investment in China, making sure that screening is done not just at the U.S. border, but our neighbors as well.”