Canada and the United States will begin formal bilateral negotiations to review the USMCA and their trade relations in mid-January, as confirmed by the Canadian government.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, said in a statement that the minister in charge of trade relations with the United States, Dominic LeBlanc, will meet with representatives of President Donald Trump’s administration starting in mid-January, “to launch formal talks.”
Carney’s statement is the first sign of the resumption of trade talks between the two countries since Trump suddenly canceled negotiations in late October in retaliation for the airing of a Canadian advertisement on US television that criticized the tariff policy of the Donald Trump administration.
The USMCA agreement stipulates that it must be reviewed by the three partners every six years from its entry into force on July 1, 2020.
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The review will analyze the operation of the treaty and evaluate its compliance and the disputes that have arisen between the partners in these six years. If the three countries agree, the USMCA could be extended for another 16 years.
But if any of the partners refuse to extend the agreement, two possibilities would open up. The first is to maintain the USMCA in its current conditions, with annual reviews. The second option is the termination of the treaty and the establishment of bilateral trade agreements to replace the USMCA.
Both Canada and Mexico have expressed their desire to maintain the USMCA, but the Trump administration has signaled that all three options are on the table.
This week, the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, declared in Congress that, although the USMCA “has been successful in some ways”, it is clear that it has not achieved all of Washington’s objectives “with respect to strengthening US manufacturing capacity and creating good jobs”, which is why almost all sectors of the country defend improvements to the agreement.
Greer listed the issues that the United States wants to resolve in its negotiations with Canada and Mexico, from the use of products from third countries and labor laws in the Mexican economy to the regulated management system of the Canadian agricultural sector.
On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney assured that, in his conversations with Trump, the US president has only spoken about the “review and adjustments” of the USMCA and not about the end of the North American treaty.
With information from EFE
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