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Donald Trump has suggested he will not renew the trade deal he forged with Canada and Mexico in 2020, setting the stage for years of protracted talks between Washington and two of its largest trading partners.
The three countries must confirm whether they want to renew the agreement for 16 years by July 1 or fall into a period of annual reviews. US officials have been negotiating changes to the deal with their Mexican counterparts and have held unofficial talks with Canadian ministers.
“I’m not looking to renew it,” the US president said on Wednesday. “I made the deal, and the primary reason I made the deal is that [the North American Free Trade Agreement] was the worst trade deal I’ve ever seen,” he said, referring to the trade deal between the three countries that preceded the USMCA.
He later claimed the US did not need to buy any goods from Canada or Mexico.
“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,” said Trump.
“With Mexico or Canada, we have trade deficits. We should have surpluses with them. We don’t need their cars, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy, we don’t need anything that they have.”
He added: “I don’t know that I’m going to renew it, because to be honest with you, the United States is much better.”
Major US carmakers are invested in the deal continuing, because their manufacturing supply chains are spread across the continent. The US also imports fertiliser and energy, including oil and electricity, from Canada.
The governments of Canada and Mexico did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly said the trilateral trade deal, used for the overwhelming majority of its exports to the US, will continue. In recent weeks she has shifted her tone with the US government, pushing back against Washington’s indictments of colleagues from her ruling party Morena.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has pivoted from defiance to a “Fortress North America” sales pitch in an attempt to win over Washington.
While the US has entered into talks with Mexico, Canada remains frozen out since Ontario’s premier Doug Ford launched an anti-tariff advertising campaign that upset Trump in October.
Earlier this week, Ford urged the US president to “get a deal” done with Ottawa as he struck a diplomatic tone on a visit to Washington. “I think we just need to hammer out a deal as quickly as we possibly can,” he told the FT.
