United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer last week accused Mexico of failing to comply with the USMCA, the trilateral free trade pact that is up for review next year.
He noted that his office is in talks with Mexican officials about the alleged breaches before asserting that “it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk about extending” the agreement as things stand.
Greer’s remarks came during a conversation with journalist Maria Bartiromo at the Economic Club of New York last Tuesday.
“There are a lot of things that the Mexicans are not doing that they’re supposed to be doing,” he said.
“There are areas where they’re supposed to be complying with the USMCA, where they’re not. This could be energy, telecommunications services, agricultural, all kinds of things,” Greer said without going into specifics.
In light of the alleged situation, the trade representative said that his office is in talks with Mexican officials “about how they can come into better compliance with the USMCA” ahead of the scheduled review of the pact in 2026.
The conversations with the Mexican government are needed, Greer said, “because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk about extending the USMCA or updating it when Mexico is not even complying with important parts of it.”
He said that the talks with Mexico have been taking place “fairly quietly.”
“We don’t, you know, have big press conferences about this,” Greer said.
“… Our hope and expectation is that within the next month or so we’ll have a better sense of where Mexico sits on a lot of these issues and we might be in a better position to have a more formal review of the agreement with Mexico,” he said.
The Mexican government has acknowledged that its U.S. counterpart has concerns about compliance with the USMCA, and has indicated that it wants to resolve those concerns before the formal commencement of the trade pact review.
In a speech in Mexico City’s central square on Sunday, President Claudia Sheinbaum expressed confidence that Mexico will reach a “good” agreement with the United States and other trade partners.
She said last month that the USMCA “will continue.”
“Obviously, we have tariffs today on a range of products that give a different consideration [to Mexico’s trade relationship with the United States], but the vast majority of what is exported [to the U.S.] doesn’t have tariffs,” Sheinbaum said on Sept. 18.
“… The three countries agree — obviously Canada and Mexico agree — on strengthening the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” she said.
For his part, U.S. President Donald Trump has both questioned whether the USMCA is still needed and indicated that he wants to “renegotiate” the agreement rather than just review it.
Greer questions why there is a trilateral trade pact in North America
Later in his conversation with Bartiromo, Greer said that the U.S.-Canada trade relationship “is so different from the U.S.-Mexico relationship in so many ways.”
USMCA review will be ‘more bilateral than trilateral,’ says economy minister
“It’s interesting if you look at NAFTA and then USMCA, it’s almost like: Why did we bundle it all together? I mean, the answer is it looks, … it sounds nice, right? It’s like a geopolitical thing,” he said.
“… But the reality is … we have issues with the Canadians that are specific to Canada and issues with the Mexicans that are specific to Mexico. And the Canadians and the Mexicans, they certainly trade between them, but not that much,” Greer said.
“So I think a lot of our actual negotiations going forward will probably be, you know, almost bilateral. There are going to be certain issues that a trilateral solution might be helpful, but I think we’re going to spend a lot of time just one-on-one with each of these countries,” he said.
After Greer’s remarks last Tuesday, Mexico’s Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard agreed that much of the negotiations during the 2026 review of the trilateral USMCA free trade pact will be bilateral rather than between Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Ebrard said it is “inevitable” that the review will include bilateral negotiations, as there are distinct bilateral trade relationships within the framework of the trilateral pact.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies (peter.davies@mexiconewsdaily.com)
