With the official review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) two weeks away and relations between the U.S. and Canada cooling again after a slight thaw, the trade deal’s future is decidedly uncertain.
Trade experts believe that the kickoff of the six-year review period on July 1 will be a jumping off point for dealmaking, as a ready renewal of the trilateral free-trade pact as it stands is unlikely. Or, as a Magic 8 Ball might portend, “Outlook Not So Good” for the USMCA in its current form.
But signs point to the deal’s continuation regardless of President Donald Trump’s pooh-poohing in recent months, according to the Cato Institute. Though the Commander in Chief stated last week that he’s “not looking to renew” the agreement, “the rhetoric is… perhaps less dramatic than it seems,” the Washington, D.C.-based think tank’s policy analyst, Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, wrote Tuesday.
Even if the U.S., which represents one-third of the pact, decides not to extend the USMCA by the time the Free Trade Commission meets to conduct the joint review, the agreement will still remain in place for another decade. A decision against a timely renewal would trigger an annual review process that would persist until 2036, when the deal officially expires, or until a longer extension is agreed upon.
In other words, as far as it’s fallen out of favor with the president, a non-renewal in July would not be the USMCA’s “death knell,” Obregon wrote. In fact, if Trump wants to remove the U.S. from the agreement, the U.S. government must give six months’ notice to the governments of Mexico and Canada.
Trump could have triggered the six-month wind-down before the deal’s official review, but thus far, he has not.
This truth may serve as a pressure release valve for the negotiations taking place over the coming weeks—but Trump’s “approach to the USMCA review is not risk-free,” Obregon acknowledged. “If talks drag on or reach an impasse, the Trump administration might escalate its rhetoric about replacing the USMCA with bilateral agreements or withdrawing from it entirely.”
While those outcomes are doubtful, the analyst wrote that repeated denigration of the deal could become a dangerously destabilizing force. “With the USMCA a pillar of co-production among the three North American countries and trade policy uncertainty linked to lower business investment, this heightened uncertainty stands to impact American companies with operations and suppliers across the region,” he added.
Calling the agreement into question continuously could have far from negligible consequences indeed, given that Mexico and Canada have individually—and even more so collectively—surpassed China as America’s biggest trading partners.
Mexico in particular has become the most prominent source of U.S. imports due to a recent nearshoring boom, accounting for $533.8 billion in 2025 compared to China’s comparatively lackluster $299.7 billion. Canada accounted for $383.1 billion in imports to the U.S. market last year, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC). That number has fallen from a high point of $437.7 billion in 2022.
Both Canada and Mexico are also important export markets given their proximity and duty-free status under USMCA. Total trade between the U.S. and Mexico amounted to $872.8 billion in 2025, while total trade between the U.S. and Canada was worth $712.8, USITC data showed.
As such, Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S., Mark D. Wiseman, doesn’t believe the world is witnessing the USMCA’s last gasp.
“Everybody take a deep breath, relax, it’s all going to be OK,” he told an audience at an event in Toronto on Monday, according to Canada’s The Globe and Mail.
“It doesn’t matter if we work through those issues and conclude that review on July the 2nd or conclude that review in January, or if we never, frankly, conclude the review,” he added. “The base case is that the agreement remains in place through ‘til 2036.”
Wiseman said Canadian officials are more concerned currently with sector-specific tariffs of up to 50 percent on products like steel, aluminum and light motor vehicles. “Those tariffs are the ones that are biting in terms of impact on the Canadian economy,” Wiseman said, according to the Wall Street Journal. The vast majority of Canadian imports into the U.S. are not, and were not, tariffed, as they were covered under the USMCA while Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) duties were in place.
The Canadian ambassador said that the sectoral tariffs, by contrast, are doing major harm to the country’s manufacturers, and a resolution must be found soon “because unlike everything else under USMCA, the default is they’re staying in place, and they are incredibly, incredibly painful to wide sectors of the of the Canadian economy.”
