USTR Greer says US-Mexico-Canada pact talks may run past July 1 deadline

The Trump administration will try to resolve as many problems with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement as it can before July 1, but negotiations to rebalance the trade pact are likely to continue past that deadline, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday.

Greer told an event at the Hudson Institute that the U.S. may need to take steps to exit the North American trade pact in order to continue the talks. 

He said that President Donald Trump "has been clear that he is dissatisfied with a lot of the outcomes of USMCA," including a significant surge of auto imports from Mexico and steel and aluminum imports from both countries.

Greer said that while there are valuable aspects to the USMCA agreement, which Trump approved in 2020 to replace the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, there will need to be separate U.S. protocols for Mexico and Canada due to their trade differences.

While the USTR has already started negotiations with Mexico, the Canada talks would likely start in May. On July 1, the three countries need to approve a renewal of the existing USMCA agreement or signal their intention to exit the pact, a process that takes 10 years, but which would buy more time for alterations.

"So I think that we aren't probably going to resolve all issues by July 1," Greer said, adding that USTR would work to resolve as much as possible before then. Greer also said that he would need to notify Congress of U.S. intentions toward the agreement by June 1.