The United States has asked Mexico to review labour practices at Carolina Performance Fabrics, a maker of specialised high performance textiles for the automotive industry in the state of Guanajuato. The request, announced by the Office of the US Trade Representative, invokes the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism in the United States Mexico Canada Agreement and covers whether workers at the plant are being denied the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.
The case began with a petition filed on September 10, 2026 by a Mexican union affiliated with the Confederacion Central Nacional, which alleged that the company interfered in union activity and retaliated against workers trying to organise, including through harassment, threats and unlawful dismissals. The interagency committee that reviews such petitions said it found sufficient credible evidence of a denial of rights to invoke the mechanism in good faith. Those are allegations at this stage; no Mexican or US finding against the company has been published.
Alongside the request, the Trade Representative directed the Treasury to suspend liquidation of unliquidated entries of goods from the facility, the step that puts the plant’s shipments in financial limbo while the review runs. Mexico has 10 days to agree to conduct a review and, if it agrees, 45 days from the request to complete it.
The mechanism is the sharp end of the trade agreement’s labour chapter: it targets individual facilities, moves in weeks rather than years, and can end in remediation, a denial of entry for the plant’s goods, or a dispute panel. For auto supply chains that run through Guanajuato, a single plant case is a reminder that labour compliance is now a customs issue, not only a workplace one. Status: review requested, Mexican decision pending.