Trump vows to renegotiate USMCA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico

CTV National News: Trudeau on renegotiating USMCA Prime Minister Trudeau says that if the next U.S. president re-opens negotiations for the USMCA, Canada will prioritize its own interests.

Donald Trump has vowed to renegotiate the USMCA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico if he wins the November presidential election.

"I am announcing today that upon taking office, I will formally notify Mexico and Canada of my intention to invoke the six-year renegotiation provisions of the USMCA that I put in," Trump told the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday.

Following tense negotiations, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement went into effect in 2020 to replace the earlier North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump targeted soon into his first presidency. The new USMCA agreement is up for review on its sixth anniversary in 2026, when the three countries will have to confirm in writing if they wish to extend the pact or re-evaluate it.

"That was the hardest thing I had to get, they didn't want that," Trump claimed of the unique review clause. "I said, 'Nope, I want to be able to renegotiate in six years, otherwise we're not making the deal.' And I got it, and it's coming due very soon. Oh, I'm going to have a lot of fun."

Speaking on Thursday in Motor City, Trump said he wanted to better protect and promote the U.S. auto industry, which has long been centred in Detroit.

"I'll also seek strong new protections against transshipment, so that China and other countries cannot smuggle their products and auto parts into the United States tax free through Mexico to the detriment of our workers and our supply chains," the Republican presidential candidate said in a wide-ranging speech. "They smuggle this stuff in. They don't pay anything. We're going to have very strong language on that."

The negotiations that began in 2017 to replace NAFTA brought Canada-U.S. relations to a low-point, as Trump hurled insults at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and slapped hefty tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel.

"I terminated NAFTA. That's a pretty big thing," Trump said on Thursday. "A lot of people said it would be impossible to do. I got it done, and we have a great deal now. What we have to do is make it much better even, and we'll be able to do that very shortly."

The new agreement included more U.S. access to Canadian supply managed sectors like dairy, allowed for cheaper online cross-border shipping and required higher levels of North American content in vehicles.

"Every time he talks about ripping up a free trade deal, it has a bigger impact in Canada for sure than it does in the United States," former B.C. premier Christy Clark told CTV News Power Play on Thursday. "We are more dependent on them than they are on us. But having said that, they are more dependent on us than they are on anybody else for their trade."

Harris would also reopen USMCA

During her time in the U.S. Senate, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was one of only 10 U.S. senators to vote against the new USMCA agreement, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in January 2020. Joining the likes of Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, Harris argued the agreement didn't do enough to tackle environmental issues.

"I have concluded that the USMCA's environmental provisions are insufficient – and by not addressing climate change, the USMCA fails to meet the crises of this moment," Harris said at the time.

In a recent series of posts on X, Harris confirmed that she would reopen the USMCA agreement as president.

"As one of only 10 senators to vote against USMCA, I knew it was not sufficient to protect our country and its workers," Harris wrote in September. "Many who voted for this deal conditioned their support on a review process, which, as president, I will use."

Harris had also previously expressed her opposition to the original NAFTA agreement, which U.S. President Joe Biden voted for as a senator in 1993.

"I would not have voted for NAFTA, and because I believe that we can do a better job to protect American workers," Harris said in a May 2019 interview with CNN. "I also believe that we need to do a better job in terms of thinking about … issues like the climate crisis and what we need to do to build [them] into these trade agreements."

In the lead-up to the November U.S. election, Trudeau's government has been actively courting American politicians and business leaders to tout the mutual benefits of free trade.

"No matter who is the U.S. president in 2025, Canada's economy would be affected by a trade protectionism, just to different degrees," Carleton University political scientist Aaron Ettinger previously told CTVNews.ca. "Either way, Canadians will need to be alert."

With files from CTV News National Correspondent Rachel Aiello