By Cassandra Garrison and Kylie Madry
MEXICO CITY, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Mexican officials are meeting with their U.S. counterparts on Tuesday to negotiate deliveries under a water treaty that has again heightened diplomatic tensions between the two trading partners with tariff threats if the Latin American country does not comply.
U.S. President Donald Trump accused Mexico of violating an 81-year-old treaty that outlines water sharing between the neighbors and threatened to impose an additional 5% tariff
on goods from Mexico if it doesn't immediately provide 200,000 acre-feet of water before December 31. An acre-foot is enough to fill about half an Olympic-size swimming pool.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and other senior officials will meet virtually with U.S. officials, including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Secretary of State Christopher Landau. Sheinbaum said in her morning press conference she expected to resolve the dispute.
Under the 1944 agreement governing water sharing through a network of dams and reservoirs, Mexico must deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of Rio Grande water to the United States every five years.
The Latin American country, the largest trading partner of the U.S., has at times struggled to make its deliveries, citing drought conditions fueled by climate change, and local demand.
Mexican officials say that the treaty offers leniency, allowing the water debt to be rolled over to the next five-year cycle, a point of tension with U.S. counterparts who say the delayed deliveries devastate Texan farmers who need it for their crops.
Sheinbaum said that Mexico is limited in delivering more water by the country's own needs and by the physical size of the pipeline.
A spokesperson for Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz said Mexico had "flagrantly violated" its treaty obligations.
"Mexico’s water shortfall is a deliberate policy choice by the Mexican government, not a result of infrastructure or environmental shortfalls," the spokesperson said.
Trump first threatened tariffs on Mexico over the issue earlier this year and accused the country of "stealing the water from Texas farmers."
Mexico agreed in April to increase its water deliveries to Texas to help make up the shortfall, temporarily defusing the dispute, which has threatened to complicate ongoing negotiations of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
(Reporting by Kylie Madry and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
