Weeks before a formal review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is due to take place, Canada has called upon its hemispheric trade partners to renew their trilateral trade truce for 16 years.
Canadian Minister for U.S.-Canada Trade Dominic LeBlanc and Canadian Chief Trade Negotiator Janice Charette traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer and discuss the future of the agreement.
Ahead of the Tuesday meeting, LeBlanc sent a letter to Greer and Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard, writing that USMCA “is highly beneficial to each of our countries and to the integrated North American economy,” and that it should be preserved even if “improvements” are ultimately made. He added that America’s neighbor to the north “is willing to consider any proposal that can be beneficial to all three nations’ long-term prosperity.”
The trade agreement, which comes up for its six-year review on July 1, has been the subject of heated debate in recent months, with President Donald Trump earlier this year calling it “irrelevant” and threatening to pull out of the pact that he brokered during his first term. Greer, too, has hinted that bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada could replace USMCA, which provides duty-free access to all three countries while helping to facilitate an integrated regional supply chain.
While both countries have been targeted by the Trump administration for perceived injustices like allowing fentanyl to flow through borders into the U.S., the American president’s relationship with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has become increasingly sour while he routinely professes admiration for his Mexican counterpart, President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Mexico is also ahead of Canada in negotiations with the U.S.; last week, a USTR delegation led by Deputy Ambassador Jeff Goettman traveled south to the country’s capital for a round of talks about economic security and rules of origin for certain industrial goods. On June 16-17, a Mexican trade delegation will visit Washington with the intention of discussing the trade of agricultural products.
Greer reaffirmed that, by contrast, the U.S. faces “significant” challenges in its dealings with Canada.
Following this week’s meeting, though, LeBlanc told reporters that the Canadians made headway. “We had an opportunity to take stock of progress that had been made over the last number of weeks on a series of technical issues, and we presented a number of specific proposals to Ambassador Greer that we think are good in the broader context of the North American economy and respond to some long-standing issues that the United States has raised with us,” he said. He didn’t expound on those issues, though he said sector-specific tariffs were a factor of importance for Canada.
Acknowledging that trade talks between the two nations ground to a halt last fall, LeBlanc insisted that they’ve been “unfrozen” for several months and that he feels bullish about a fruitful outcome.
He also said it was in all three countries’ best interest to commit to USMCA for another 16 years in order to provide a stable trade environment for all three nations.
Contrary to public speculation, the deal doesn’t expire in July; if the partners can’t come to a consensus about its future during the review, that outcome will kick off a cycle of annual reviews that will continue until an agreement is reached—or until 2036, when it officially terminates.
“I think all of us know that the road to conclusions in these conversations is sometimes not a straight line,” LeBlanc said Tuesday. “You can suddenly hit clear air turbulence when you don’t expect it, and sometimes you can have a very smooth ride with no turbulence. So, I remain optimistic that we’ll focus on the latter.”
“We have a lot of work to do between now and July 1,” he added.
