FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump arrives to deliver a statement along with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the signing of a new free trade agreement in Buenos Aires, on November 30, 2018, on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders’ Summit.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
The Trump administration has decided not to renew its trilateral trade pact with Canada and Mexico, instead opting to conduct annual reviews of the treaty that President Donald Trump once called “the best agreement we’ve ever made.”
The widely anticipated decision on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA, was revealed Wednesday, the deadline for the three North American trade partners to determine whether they would renew their agreement for another 16-year term.
The decision means the USMCA will stay in effect for another decade, provided no member tries to withdraw from it. But it also triggers yearly reviews that could result in the renegotiation of major parts of the treaty.
Trump “chose not to rubber stamp a USMCA renewal without addressing existing issues,” a senior administration official told reporters in a call announcing the move.
“So in other words, the United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form. So, as a result, the USMCA is not renewed,” the official said.
Trump’s “primary” issue with USMCA centers on America’s trade deficits with the two trading partners, according to the official.
The official added that Trump “has already changed the nature of the US-Canada-Mexico trading relationship” prior to Wednesday’s deadline through his tariffs. “So we have already seen USMCA, to some degree, to some degree subordinated by the president’s robust trade policy and adjustments of policies.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a statement released while the call was ongoing, said that the Trump administration “will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings.”
The USMCA was negotiated during Trump’s first term to replace the previous, 26-year-old trilateral trade pact known as NAFTA, which Trump frequently excoriated as a raw deal for the U.S.
When the new deal came into effect in July 2020, Trump touted it as “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law.”
But Trump’s enthusiasm for USMCA has recently waned, coinciding with mounting strain on the U.S. relationships with its two neighbors.
“I don’t know that I’m going to renew it,” Trump said of USMCA in June. “We don’t need anything that Canada has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have. And they have to treat us better.”
Trump has long complained about the U.S. sustaining trade deficits with its economic partners. Seeking to address that perceived unfairness and force other policy changes, Trump in his second term imposed a series of tariffs on nearly every country, including Mexico and Canada.
Trump’s tariff regime has since been stymied by court losses.
The U.S. and Mexico had already begun a series of bilateral negotiations that are scheduled to continue past the July 1 deadline date. The U.S. and Canada have not started their own talks, however.
