U.S. trade rep says unlikely CUSMA review deadline will be met

Robert Glasgow reacts to the comments from U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer regarding tariffs being implemented as part of CUSMA negotiations.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says while it’s unlikely the U.S. administration will hash out all of its trade issues with Canada and Mexico by July 1, he’s optimistic they’ll be resolved as soon as possible.

“I think that we aren’t probably going to be able to resolve all issues by July 1, but I think we are on track to resolve many of them and to move as quickly as we can,” he said, adding he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself.

Greer made the comments during a fireside chat at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, on Tuesday.

The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which was negotiated and signed during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, is up for review this summer. The July 1 deadline Greer referenced is the date by which the United States needs to inform Canada and Mexico whether it wants to reopen the deal for a full renegotiation.

Greer has signalled for weeks that negotiations with Mexico ahead of the official CUSMA review are moving ahead faster than they are with Canada.

“My own sense is, we want to resolve as much as we can,” Greer said Tuesday, adding while the U.S. administration has “resolved a lot of issues” with Mexico, there are still some with Canada “that haven’t been resolved yet.”

Greer compared certain provisions within CUSMA to “load-bearing pillars,” which currently function well within the agreement, and that the United States doesn’t want to change or get rid of. But, he added, there are other elements of the deal that are specific to U.S. relations with Mexico and Canada that are under review.

“There are certainly things in there that are valuable, but we do have to have some kind of a protocol, or something with Mexico and one with Canada separately, I think, to deal with issues specific to those countries,” he said.

“Our import-export profile is different with each country,” he added. “The labour situation in each country is different, the reasons why we have deficits with these countries are different. So, it necessitates two separate protocols that we can, I think, layer over those load-bearing pillars of (CUSMA).”

Greer’s office, meanwhile, released its annual longlist of trade irritants last week, with several pages specifically relating to Canada, and pointing to liquor, supply management, Buy Canadian procurement policies, and the Online Streaming Act among others as sticking points.

Speaking to reporters last week, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said “nothing on that list was particularly surprising to Canada,” and insisted talks between the two countries have been progressing.

“As recently as this week, we continued high-level collaborative discussions with the American officials,” LeBlanc said.