US President Donald Trump is considering ending the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and negotiating a new agreement while major industry groups are pushing for it to be renewed for another full 16-year term, according to a FreightWaves report.
In a 5 December podcast with Politico’s White House bureau chief Dasha Burns, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was quoted as saying “the president’s view is he only wants deals that are a good deal.
The reason why we built a review period into USMCA was in case we needed to revise it, review it or exit it”.
Greer told Politico that Trump had also raised the idea of negotiating separately with Canada and Mexico and dividing the agreement into two parts.
The USA, Mexico and Canada were preparing for the first six-year joint review of the USMCA in 2026, FreightWaves wrote.
Negotiated during Trump’s first term as president, the USMCA replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020.
Despite the possibility of the USA withdrawing from the trade pact, several trade and business organisations said USMCA had become a cornerstone of North American economic integration, the 7 December report said.
During a series of public hearings at a USMCA panel in Congress, trade associations, including the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) had voiced strong support for maintaining USMCA’s duty-free market access and existing rules of origin, FreightWaves wrote.
NGFA had pressed for a full renewal without altering the agreement’s core terms, citing the essential role Mexico and Canada played as US export markets for corn, soyabeans and wheat, the report said.
“Mexico and Canada are two of the most important export markets for US corn, soyabeans, wheat and other commodities,” NGFA President and CEO Mike Seyfert said in his testimony.
“Mexico, in particular, purchased more than US$12bn in US grain and oilseed products last year and is expected to surpass China as our largest export customer.”
