Lori Wallach

Well, it's a little unclear what will happen next.

The agreement, which was, you know, something President Trump called incredible and was his biggest success of trade in his first term,

has had outcomes that were basically the opposite of what we were promised.

So we have fewer manufacturing jobs overall in the U.S.

economy than before the USMCA.

We have fewer auto manufacturing jobs.

And our trade balance with our partners, Mexico and Canada, is much, much bigger.

And so that is...

A set of problems that can be fixed in fixing this agreement, but the president has to decide to do that.

the three countries have started bilateral meetings.

Mexico and Canada are not meeting with the U.S.

together, but rather U.S.-Canada, U.S.-Mexico.

And the meetings with Mexico have gone farther so far.

But the really big fixes, the things that are necessary, for instance, the premise of

of the USMCA replacing NAFTA was we'd have a high standard, higher wage agreement, and we'd get rid of that trade deficit because workers in Mexico would make more, be able to buy more exports from the US.

And so the biggest problem with USMCA remains the direly low wages in Mexico.

And that is a scenario that a big renegotiation with some new rules, also to make sure that imports from countries that aren't playing by the rules don't get in, that can fix some of these problems.

Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.

all agreed to put up high tariffs against imports of subsidized, trade-cheating Chinese electric vehicles.

And that has actually helped within North America to try and solidify creating a supply chain here.