The United States declined Wednesday to renew the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement for another 16 years, forgoing the automatic long-term extension of the $2 trillion trilateral pact and triggering a system of annual reviews that will run down a 10-year clock toward the deal's possible expiration in 2036.

The decision, confirmed on a Wednesday afternoon call with reporters by a senior Trump administration official and in a written statement by U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer, leaves USMCA in force but strips out the multi-year certainty on which North American manufacturing supply chains were built. Farmers, automakers and cross-border investors now face yearly re-litigation of rules that had been on track to hold until 2042.

What Washington wants

The senior official said the administration "chose not to rubber stamp a USMCA renewal without addressing existing issues," and Greer said in his statement that the United States "did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form." The official cited persistent trade deficits — $48 billion with Canada and $197 billion with Mexico last year — and the risk that third-country goods, particularly from China, are routed through Mexico to enter the U.S. duty-free.

President Trump signed USMCA in 2018 and called it at the time "the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law." Trump said last month, "I don't know that I'm going to renew it."

On the auto beat

The auto sector, which CNBC put at roughly 18 percent of U.S. trade with its two neighbors, is the immediate battleground. Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley told CNBC on Wednesday that Ford wants a rewrite that rewards carmakers producing at home. "It's imperative that any new agreement makes it easier, not harder, to compete with U.S. makers who import from Japan, South Korea and global competitors that import from those locations," Farley said.

General Motors and Toyota Motor, the two largest sellers in the United States in 2025, were also the top two vehicle importers, at 1.17 million and 1.19 million units respectively, according to industry data cited by CNBC.

The pushback

Business groups opposed reopening. A consortium of U.S. trade groups representing most automakers, dealers and suppliers urged the three governments "to swiftly reach consensus on an extension of USMCA that preserves the existing trilateral partnership." The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that manufacturing and agriculture rely on cross-border certainty, and Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's former ambassador to Washington, told the BBC that a political fight now would be "a huge own goal." U.S. steel producers broke the other way: the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Steel Manufacturers Association welcomed the annual-review structure, arguing it hands U.S. negotiators leverage.

U.S. and Mexican negotiators are scheduled to meet again the week of July 20; talks with Canada, whose relations with Washington have cooled after retaliatory tariffs, continue without public sessions on the calendar.