Foreign & Public Diplomacy

On July 1, Canada, Mexico, and the United States will hit the first real deadline in the review of their trilateral trade pact, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). By then, the three governments must either endorse renewal or signal an intention to exit, even as negotiations continue. That milestone matters not only for North American trade. It is the first major test of whether Ottawa has more leverage in its relationship with Washington than its own policy establishment has taught it to expect.

The familiar Ottawa script runs like this: Washington presses, Ottawa defends, and Canada absorbs most of the pain. In its sharpest current form, Steven Globerman and Jock Finlayson of the Fraser Institute have argued that retaining USMCA, which Canada calls CUSMA, will require Canada to accept “politically difficult concessions” on supply management, cultural protection, banking, telecommunications, and drug pricing. Patrick Leblond of the University of Ottawa has publicly characterized the U.S. posture as telling Canada, “We’re going to put the gun to your head, and you’re going to give us what we want.”

On July 1, Canada, Mexico, and the United States will hit the first real deadline in the review of their trilateral trade pact, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). By then, the three governments must either endorse renewal or signal an intention to exit, even as negotiations continue. That milestone matters not only for North American trade. It is the first major test of whether Ottawa has more leverage in its relationship with Washington than its own policy establishment has taught it to expect.

The familiar Ottawa script runs like this: Washington presses, Ottawa defends, and Canada absorbs most of the pain. In its sharpest current form, Steven Globerman and Jock Finlayson of the Fraser Institute have argued that retaining USMCA, which Canada calls CUSMA, will require Canada to accept “politically difficult concessions” on supply management, cultural protection, banking, telecommunications, and drug pricing. Patrick Leblond of the University of Ottawa has publicly characterized the U.S. posture as telling Canada, “We’re going to put the gun to your head, and you’re going to give us what we want.”

These are serious readings of a serious situation. But they are readings inside a frame that treats asymmetry as the only thing worth reading. The United States still took 71.7 percent of Canadian goods exports in 2025, even as that share fell to its lowest level since the early 1980s. The asymmetry is real. The fatalism attached to it is not.

Prime Minister Mark Carney enters this phase with a parliamentary majority and unusual domestic runway. An Abacus Data survey conducted in February found that only 45 percent of Canadians believed that the end of USMCA would be bad for Canada; a majority said it would make no difference or be a positive. Half of respondents said Carney was protecting Canada’s core interests without giving up too much. Canadians, Abacus concluded, prefer strategies that........

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