Canada warns USMCA could face annual reviews, fueling uncertainty and
chilling investment
[February 27, 2026] By
ROB GILLIES
TORONTO (AP) — Canada’s minister for U.S. trade said Thursday the United
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement could be subject to annual review and
that uncertainty could be the objective of the Trump administration.
Dominic LeBlanc told a business audience in Toronto that he will meet
with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer late next week in
Washington ahead of the mandatory review of the USMCA in July.
“If there’s no consensus in the review the agreement continues. Then
there’s an annual review that starts and if uncertainty is one of the
objectives from one of our (USMCA) partners you can imagine scenarios of
how this might go,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said the current uncertainty about the future of the free trade
deal is causing a break in investment decisions in Canada.
“Net business investment is down,” LeBlanc said. “Therein lies one of
the big challenges. We have to control what we can control.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has set a goal for Canada to double
its non-U.S. exports in the next decade, saying American tariffs are
causing a chill in investment. Carney recently made a trade deal with
China and is in India this week.
U.S. President Donald Trump negotiated the USMCA in his first term and
included a clause to review the deal in 2026.
Trump has talked about getting the U.S. automakers to close factories in
Canada and move them to the U.S. and Greer has talked about “reshoring”
industrial production.
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Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc gestures during a news
conference on tariffs, March 12, 2025 in Ottawa, Ontario. (Adrian
Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
 LeBlanc said he’s “not pessimistic”
about the future of the trade deal because the U.S. maintained an
exemption for Canada and Mexico under the deal when Trump announced
new tariffs recently.
“So, they’re doing that because it’s in the American economic
interest to do that,” he said.
Most of Canada’s exports to the U.S. are currently exempted by USMCA.
But tariffs are taking a toll on certain sectors of Canada’s
economy, particularly aluminum, steel, auto and lumber.
LeBlanc said he felt Canada was close to getting a deal on sectoral
tariffs in the fall, before Trump abruptly ended talks in response
to an antitariff TV ad produced by the Ontario government.
LeBlanc said Trump administration officials have been engaged in a
“political argument” about trade in public but insisted that’s not
the case behind closed doors.
“There is a public prosecution of the argument, the political
argument in the United States, and there are the private
government-to-government-to-government conversations, which are not
discouraging,” LeBlanc said.
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