President Trump claims USMCA is “irrelevant” ahead of its review this summer, local experts disagree

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- President Trump visited Michigan last week, where he said the USMCA trade agreement is irrelevant to the country's economy. The president claimed the U.S. does not need either Mexico or Canada for trade and industry. Local economy experts and leaders say this is not true.

"There's no advantage to it, it's irrelevant to me," President Trump said at a Ford manufacturing plant last week. "Canada would love it, Canada wants it and they need it because we don't need Canada's product and that's the thing, I want to be a nice person, but we don't need it."

"I want to build the cars here, not in Canada. We used to build cars in Canada and now the Canadians are moving here to build cars; same thing with Mexico, same thing with Japan," President Trump added.

The agreement includes a clause that requires a review every six years to decide whether to extend it for another 16 years or end it in ten years. The review is set to begin on July 1, 2026, and all three countries will decide.

"Up through 2024, there was a lot of policy continuity. Beginning in January 2025, there has been federal policy that moves all over the place, and it's caused a lot of uncertainty throughout the United States," said UTEP Professor of Economics and Finance Dr. Tom Fullerton. "But since much of the policy uncertainty and pronouncements or mispronouncements occur about USMCA, even more of that uncertainty has occurred here within the border region because we depend so much on international manufacturing and international commerce."

Professor Fullerton also told ABC-7 that there's also a lot of international commerce that occurs in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, which simply relies on good relations between the two countries and a close-to-seamless linkage that allows customers to move back and forth across bridges.

"It would be helpful if the White House would acknowledge that even though the United States economy is much larger than the Canadian economy and the Mexican economy, the increase in international trade and international investment flows between all three countries has benefited the United States as well as Canada and Mexico," Professor Fullerton added.

ABC-7 also spoke with the CEO of the Borderplex Alliance, Jon Barela, who said the USMCA agreement has been an unparalleled success not only for Canada, Mexico and the U.S., but also for the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez region in particular. According to him, this area is the fifth-largest manufacturing hub in North America, with over 350,000 residents working in manufacturing enterprises in the region, a 16% increase over the past two years, and truck cross-border trade at the local ports of entry.

"One of the great successes that President Trump had during his first term was wide bipartisan support in both houses of Congress that ratified the USMCA, the deal that his administration cut. So it's been a very successful agreement. And once every six years, we review the agreement. We're due to do that here soon. And in the months ahead, we'll see where we go," CEO Barela said.

CEO Barela adds that the USMCA has proven its importance not only by creating jobs, but also through the foreign direct investment that has been generated by the three economies.

"We've also seen many investors from Canada and Europe investing heavily in our region; so we believe that trend will continue if the USMCA is re-certified, re-ratified," CEO Barela added.

"The tariffs have also caused a lot of investment plans to be sidelined because there was so much uncertainty about what was ultimately going to happen, and incredibly, all the tariff threats were against Mexico for products that were covered under USMCA," Professor Fullerton also said. "It took several weeks, but eventually it was all clarified, but it was kind of unnecessary to go through that whole experience."

"Ultimately, just the tariffs in general are hurting businesses throughout the United States and a lot of times, when tariffs are applied, they're used to final goods, consumer goods, but the tariffs that have been enacted over the last 12 months by the United States fall upon not only consumer goods or final goods, but also intermediate inputs, raw materials and equipment," Professor Fullerton said.