The Review: U.S., Mexico, Canada Charting New Ground with a Novel Mechanism

International Trade attorney Patrick Childress was quoted in an Inside U.S. Trade article on what to expect as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) heads into its statutorily required six-year review, a process the Trump Administration has approached with a list of concerns to resolve. He noted that the U.S. is likely to press for reforms while Mexico and Canada will aim to protect much of the current framework, creating a potentially tense negotiating environment with uncertainty around priorities and timelines. Mr. Childress also highlighted that recent signals from the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) suggest the administration may emphasize country-by-country bargaining rather than relying on traditional trilateral rounds that follow an agreed cadence.

USTR's list of bilateral issues outnumber trilateral ones, he said. "That indicates to me that the [administration is] approaching these negotiations largely on a bilateral basis. I think there will be trilateral negotiations as well, but I think that the standard trilateral negotiations will be less of a focus in the USMCA six-year review than they would be in a standard fair trade agreement negotiation."

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