WASHINGTON, D.C. — It makes sense that states along the Canada-U.S. border are feeling the pinch of the trade war, whether it’s Michigan’s heavily integrated automotive manufacturing or Maine’s lumber trade. But a new analysis by Advancing American Freedom (AAF) shows that Canada also plays an important economic role in deeply red Republican states like Montana and North Dakota.

Canada accounts for 62 and 55 per cent of Maine and Vermont’s international goods trade, according to AAF, and a whopping 77 per cent in North Dakota and Montana, states President Donald Trump carried by 36 and 20 percentage points, respectively, in 2024.

The nature of the exposure is different for Montana and North Dakota, says AAF policy analyst Kat Miller. “Canada buys about … 82 per cent of everything North Dakota sells abroad,” she said, while “88 per cent of everything Montana buys from abroad comes from Canada.” But dependence is not the same as tariff exposure: mineral fuels account for 80 per cent of North Dakota’s exports to Canada, according to Miller, and are exempt from Canadian countertariffs.

Either way, with the U.S. midterm elections looming, the tariff impact in deep-red states raises the question of whether it makes them pressure points for the White House — or whether Republican loyalty makes that trade exposure easier for Trump to ignore.

In recent days, Republicans seeking midterm votes have publicly spoken out against the tariffs.

“Canada is not China. It is our neighbour, our friend, our closest ally, and our biggest trading partner,” said Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins during a Senate debate on Oct. 6.

“I have been strongly voting against the tariffs with Canada, but I’ve also been working behind the scenes,” she added.

In Michigan, U.S. Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has also spoken out. Having originally defended Trump’s tariffs, Rogers launched a campaign ad against them on Oct. 7.

“Here in Michigan, we know Canada is not our enemy,” he said. “We need to end this tariff war now.”

Those appeals come from competitive Senate contests, and it is less clear whether dependence on Canada is generating similar pressure from safer Republican areas.

But Richard Stern, vice president of the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom, says a lot more is happening behind the scenes.

“A lot of the private conversation is trying to push to stop this war with Canada,” he said. “A lot of them privately are putting pressure on this … and are going to the Commerce Department, Treasury, White House and saying, ‘Look, you’re really hurting Americans here. Knock it off.’”

So will these efforts and the impact on even redder states have some leverage over Trump?

“I think it does matter,” said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, acting director and senior fellow at the Americas Program of CSIS in Washington, referring to currently Republican states with exposed economies to Canada. “In fact, this has always been part of Canada’s playbook, which is to lobby with state and local governments that are Republican that are trade dependent with Canada.”

“Whether it’s sufficient to … nudge the president is another matter altogether,” he added, noting that it “doesn’t necessarily mean that the president is gonna change his tune.”

Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, also noted that such red-state dependence would normally be a channel to the president through their senators.

“In a normal presidency, yes, because it means there’s somebody who the president knows who can pick up the phone and have a conversation … and say, ‘We really need to do this for my voters who are your voters, too,’” he said.

The caveat: this is not a normal presidency. Sands pointed to how much Trump has ignored Congress over the past two years.

“This president hasn’t worked Capitol Hill that much … (Trump) seems to write off the whole institution as irrelevant,” Sands said.

The tariffs themselves help reflect how Trump is imposing policy without Congress, so trade watchers are skeptical that Republican senators and representatives will have much pull with Trump.

“In terms of trade policy, it’s very executive-driven these days,” said Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington.

“Even if Congress did (push back), it probably wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said.

Even AAF, a conservative think tank and policy advocacy organization, doubts that Republican candidate pushback and the potential damage to deep-red states by the trade war will sway Trump.

“It does not seem like Trump seems to care … whether tariffs are popular or not or whether people are being harmed or not,” Stern acknowledged.

Sands also expressed dismay at the president’s apparent indifference to the electoral costs his tariffs and spat with Canada may bring.

“His indifference to the fate of his party in Congress is … pretty unusual,” he said.

While many believe Trump will stick with his tariff agenda, whatever the cost to the GOP, election polling shows that a majority of Americans — amid today’s affordability crisis — oppose the tariffs.

“You don’t get very far in American politics by telling people, ‘I’ve got your vote in the bag, and I don’t care about you,’” Stern said.

The question for Nov. 3 is whether that opposition will translate into votes. As for what he hopes voters know heading into election day, Stern said he and his colleagues have been trying to educate Americans about tariffs.

“What I would like voters … to pull out of all this at the end of the day is to understand that tariffs are taxes,” he said.

“They’re not taxes on foreigners; they’re taxes on your own people, your own industries, your own businesses, and that this is not the solution.”

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Countries don’t typically get report cards, but there are hard facts that can be collated, assessed and compared. Enter Benchmark Canada, a new project from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute that brings together more than 40 different metrics that measure this nation’s performance. This fall, the National Post is examining many of those findings.

The radars watching over Canada’s Arctic region were designed when the Soviet Union was a country. The Royal Canadian Navy’s frigates and the Royal Canadian Air Force’s fighter jets are nearing the end of their useful lives. As Canada looks to reinvigorate its defence sector with billions of dollars in new spending, years of neglect may have left Canadian Forces short of the equipment they need to fight alongside their allies.

Canada is expected to put 25 per cent of its 2026 defence budget toward major equipment, according to NATO data compiled by Benchmark Canada, a Macdonald-Laurier Institute project that ranks the country against its allies. That would exceed NATO’s 20 per cent guideline for a second consecutive year, but leave Canada ranked 28 among the 31 allies measured.

“It’s somewhat troubling but not surprising,” said retired vice-admiral Mark Norman, a former commander of the Royal Canadian Navy and vice-chief of the defence staff.

Canada’s spending pales in comparison to figures for its European allies such as Poland at 55.9 per cent, Lithuania at 46 per cent and Hungary at 45 per cent. Only Italy, at 24.5 per cent, Croatia and Norway rank below Canada.

Meanwhile, a recent report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce puts the average equipment share for the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy at 31.2 per cent, 6.2 percentage points above Canada’s estimate. France has about 202,000 military personnel, Germany 182,000 and Britain 126,000, compared with Canada’s 71,000.

Canada devoted just 11 per cent of its defence budget to equipment in 2015. Norman said military training, maintenance, spare parts and equipment purchases are often cut when budgets tighten because spending on salaries and bases is harder to reduce.

“The Armed Forces of Canada have basically been left to rot,” Norman said. “I’m not overstating it.”

An attitude shift is happening, spurred on by the Trump administration’s demand that its NATO allies increase defence spending to five per cent of GDP to alleviate the burden on the U.S. shouldering much of the alliance’s military capabilities.

Canada’s defence budget grew by 138 per cent between 2014 and 2025, compared with 125 per cent in Germany and less than 30 per cent in France and Britain, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce report found. Canadian spending reached about $64 billion, or two per cent of GDP, in 2025, and the Carney government has pledged to reach the target of five per cent of GDP by 2035.

Retired lieutenant-general Christopher Coates, a former deputy commander of NORAD and director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s foreign policy, national defence and national security program, said the increase reflects how low Canada’s spending had been.

“We were digging a hole,” he said. “That two per cent (of GDP) starts to slow down the digging of the hole. But it doesn’t fill it up.”

Coates said much of the new defence spending had gone toward increasing pay for its existing soldiers rather than an increase in troop size. Canada ranks 29 among 30 NATO countries measured for military personnel as a share of population, ahead of only Luxembourg, which notably devotes more than half its defence budget to equipment, he said.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce estimates that meeting NATO’s target of 3.5 per cent of GDP for core defence capabilities by 2035 would require about $160 billion in annual spending, roughly 2.5 times the 2025 level. Including a further 1.5 per cent of GDP for security-related spending would bring the total to at least $228 billion. Defence would account for nearly 30 per cent of federal spending, up from about 11 per cent, according to the report.

Poland has doubled defence spending as a share of GDP between 2021 and 2025, to 4.5 per cent, as it relies heavily on foreign suppliers, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s report said. In Canada, Canadian-controlled private firms account for just 18 per cent of the defence industry’s $17.3 billion in annual sales.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has flagged years of unspent defence capital funds as equipment nears its end-of-life date. Fixing old equipment to return it to operations becomes an ongoing challenge as parts for 30-year-old jet planes “are not sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be purchased,” Norman said.

Meanwhile, Coates said Canada keeps too few fighter jets on alert and lacks airborne early-warning aircraft. “We’re just being lazy about it,” he said.

“I think Canadians might assume their military can operate shoulder-to-shoulder alongside our allies, and I think that’s questionable,” Coates added. He said Canada still has gaps in deploying long-range strike weapons, anti-armour and air-defence systems, and the ability to fly drones in large numbers.

“The people are trained and motivated and committed,” he said. “I just don’t think they’re equipped and resourced.”

Norman said Canada’s procurement system was built to “pace, regulate and control” spending and is not well suited to handling a rapid increase, while also criticizing how the Canadian Forces has sometimes over-engineered its equipment. The Canadian Navy’s River-class destroyer, which he described as a concept more than 20 years old whose design has still not been finalized, is “arguably the wrong platform for the wrong time,” he said.

Both Coates and Norman pointed to Poland, Germany and the Baltic states as examples Canada could follow to improve their civil defence, procurement and ties to their domestic defence industry.

Coates also wants Ottawa to be more transparent about what its defence spending delivers and explain which threats it is preparing to confront. “You don’t ever hear a discussion of the threats,” he said.

At a time when public support for defence spending is stronger than Norman has ever seen, further delays could cost Canada military capabilities, lives and the confidence of its allies, he said.

“You cannot surge trust,” he said. “You either have it, or you don’t.”

Read more from the series

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Alain Pelletier can still remember that new plane smell when he first climbed into the cockpit of a CF-18 more than three decades ago.

The retired Royal Canadian Air Force lieutenant general, who was deputy commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs from July 2020 until June 2023, knows what it takes to get a new fleet of fighter aircraft up and running. He thinks the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) would be stretched thin for pilots, technicians and trainers if ordered to double that effort for a combined fleet of American-made Lockheed Martin F-35s and Saab Gripen-E fighters.

“Having two fleets of fighters is a challenge for any air force,” Pelletier said in a recent interview.

He is slated to speak Tuesday at The Mackenzie Institute’s Canadian Arctic Conference in Toronto to address Canada’s acquisition of new fighter aircraft, and the roles that they might play in northern defence.

Canada already has a shortage of men and women to fly and maintain its jet fighters, he said. “If they do go that route,” with a dual fleet, “the RCAF will suffer in the short (term) because you need to be able to transition to that new fleet, but now you’re transitioning not to a single fleet, you’re transitioning to two new fleets at a time when you’re just short of people. You cannot duplicate people. You cannot clone people. So, it will be a growing pain.”

With the CF-18s heading for retirement in 2032-33, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government, in the midst of a trade war with the United States, hasn’t revealed the outcome of a review of their planned replacement — 88 F-35 fighter jets, manufactured by U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin.

While Ottawa has placed a firm order for 16 F-35s and has begun paying for critical equipment for 14 additional aircraft, there’s no word yet on how many of the stealth fighters this country will ultimately buy.

Meanwhile, the Carney government is talking about supplementing the fighter jet numbers with Swedish defence giant Saab’s Gripen.

Canada has evaluated its options twice and chosen the F-35 both times, Pelletier said.

“I’ve had a chance to look at all the contenders that are out there on at least two occasions,” he said. “I think that the F-35 was a good decision, a decision that is reflected by our NATO partners.”

The U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, Finland and Norway have all gone with the F-35, he said.

“I think it is the right choice. It’s the choice that will carry operational capability for the next 30 years or so.”

The F-35 stands out, Pelletier said, for technology that allows pilots to glean information from their own fighter’s sensors, as well as those of other aircraft, warships and satellites, all “fused into a single picture,” to get a better idea of what’s going on.

“Having been a pilot, that is crucial to mission effectiveness,” he said. “You’re able to sense a threat that is out there before it can sense you.”

Pelletier, who flew combat missions in the Balkans, said the unexpected can hurt a fighter jet pilot’s survivability.

“The more variables that you control, the better it is for any fighter pilot,” said Pelletier, who is slated to speak Tuesday at The Mackenzie Institute’s Canadian Arctic Conference in Toronto.

Russia and China both pose a military threat to Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic, he said.

“They don’t come into Canadian air space because they are following rules, but they are coming close to Canadian air space,” Pelletier said.

Russian aircraft will fly close to North America’s air defence identification zone that covers the airspace surrounding the United States and Canada, then turn so their flight path parallels that line, he said.

“They have the ability to actually come much further south,” Pelletier said. “They will continue their flight until they see a reaction from NORAD, whether it be the Canadian or U.S. air force assets responding to their presence.”

Chinese aircraft have also come close to Alaskan air space during exercises in recent years, he said.

Both Canada and the U.S. will often scramble fighter jets to intercept potential intruders, Pelletier said.

“The air threat is only one piece of the all-domain threat that Russia and China could actually exploit,” he said, noting Canada must also watch out for cyber- and sea-based threats.

“We’ve had the Canadian Navy monitoring transit of what China calls research vessels that have dual-use capabilities,” Pelletier said, noting they can be used for both civilian research and military intelligence gathering.

“We’ve had Russia positioning cruise missiles off of their coast, which is in proximity to Alaska, and those cruise missiles can actually reach into Alaska and the northern part of the Yukon.”

Russia also has intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach both Canada and the U.S. through the Arctic, he said.

The development of hypersonic missiles “that have the ability to go five times the speed of sound,” and drones that can be launched off ships also pose a threat, Pelletier said.

“That’s why in NORAD we had to prepare for all-domain awareness, scanning not only the traditional air corridors, but also the sea routes and having an understanding of what may be coming our way.”

• Opting out of F-35 purchase would be ‘three ways from Sunday stupid,’ says retired major general
• Canada’s boutique military: ‘Should we not be able to defend ourselves?’

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How’s Canada doing?

Countries don’t typically get report cards, and it can be simplistic to rely on rankings that try to tell you which is the happiest or safest country in the world. But it’s not just a matter of opinion; there are hard facts to be collated, assessed and compared.

Enter Benchmark Canada , a new project from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute that brings together more than 40 different metrics that measure this nation’s performance across the economy, health care, immigration and others while comparing Canada with countries that face similar issues.

Over the coming weeks, the National Post will examine many of those findings, beginning with defence, and report on what they mean for Canadians and the government that they have entrusted to use their tax dollars wisely and pragmatically.

“Every incoming government, regardless of stripe, has an incentive to portray itself in the most positive light,” said Kevin Vuong, the former Toronto MP who leads the project as a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. “Every government is going to be motivated to find the one metric, or multiple metrics, that tell the story they want to tell.”

A discussion about Canada’s debt-to-GDP standing inspired Vuong to think about how easily a national statistic could become a well-trodden political talking point. He wanted to assemble enough comparable data that readers could judge the country’s record for themselves through a global lens.

“Ultimately, it was intended to elevate the discourse so we can get past the political rhetoric,” he said.

Vuong spent about a year developing the project with specialists in Canada and abroad. Part of the idea came from his background as a tech entrepreneur, where a company’s growth can look impressive until it is compared with its peers.

“If you grow by 12 per cent, which sounds great, but the rest of the industry grew by 25 per cent, you didn’t actually do well,” he said.

He wanted the same scrutiny applied to Canada’s performance. For example, how much Canada spends on defence matters, but also, how is that money allocated among military equipment, personnel and the cost of running the Canadian Forces?

Other measures range across public and household finances, construction and business development, government services, security and living standards. There are also comparisons for infrastructure construction costs and how long it takes for Canadians to get timely service from their government when looking at Canada Revenue Agency wait times or the time it takes to process a new passport.

Across the Benchmark Canada website, Canada is usually measured against the countries belonging to the G7 or another relevant group of developed nations. Where international data cannot support a fair comparison, Vuong incorporated Canadian benchmarks, including the governments’ own service standards.

Vuong expected plenty of poor results, but he was surprised to find enough good ones to challenge some of his own assumptions. Gasoline taxes were one surprise, he said. Benchmark Canada found that Canada is ranked the second-lowest for the share of the pump price attributable to taxes among the major seven oil-producing democracies.

“It’s an important perspective for all the people who criticize how much tax we pay, which I, like most Canadians, do,” Vuong said.

But then some of the latest mortgage numbers raised some red flags for Vuong. Canada sits close to the bottom of a G7 comparison of mortgage arrears, albeit with a caveat that the definitions and reporting periods differ for each country. The Canadian Bankers Association’s latest figures put the national rate at 0.29 per cent in September, more than double its August 2022 low of 0.14 per cent.

“I knew it was getting worse. I just didn’t know to what extent,” Vuong said.

During his time as MP for the Toronto riding of Spadina-Fort York from 2021 to 2025, he heard from constituents who were struggling to pay their bills. Now, the arrears numbers gave him ample evidence of the pressure they had described.

“Sometimes you chalk it up to someone exaggerating for dramatic effect, but this was a point of concern for me,” he said.

Vuong also thinks the website may be useful for Ottawa to have a better idea of the state of the country, without the need to navigate complex data and statistics that members of Parliament may not have the right background to fully understand or even know where to look.

Benchmark Canada was designed so its measures can be sorted by House of Commons committees, but the project should be useful well beyond Parliament Hill. Someone trying to understand the cost of a transit line, for example, can look at what other developed countries have built and what they paid and then understand if Canada’s on the right track or missing the mark entirely.

“It lets everyday Canadians know when to be upset,” he said.

Read more from the series

• A military underfunded, undermanned and underprepared
• Canada was founded with the clear goal of not being the United States

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Two people suffered apparent injuries after altercations with anti-Israel demonstrators in Toronto and Montreal on Saturday.

In the former, the Toronto Police Service is seeking the public’s help identifying a male suspect in relation to an assault causing bodily harm investigation.

Police said the victim “was engaged in conversation with another demonstrator” and was headed north on Yonge Street near the intersection of Grosvenor Street when “the suspect approached the victim from behind and punched the victim several times in the head without provocation, causing the victim to fall to the ground.”

They suffered facial and leg injuries, according to police.

The suspect is described as five-foot-five with a thin build and black hair. At the time of the alleged attack, police said he wore prescription lenses, a grey jacket, dark grey sweatpants and a black Under Armour backpack.

That description matches an assailant seen in a video shared to social media by independent journalist Mitch Hancock (@mitch6669), which appears to show the assault.

It starts with Hancock panning over the marching protest and then panning forward to see a white, middle-aged man in sunglasses and a black leather jacket saying to a demonstrator, “Do something about it, c— sucker.”

The man behind him, matching the police’s description, immediately sucker-punches him from behind and then drags him to the ground and punches him five more times in quick succession. Demonstrators on both sides quickly gather around and attempt to pry the victim free from the suspect, who keeps trying to land more blows before they’re pulled apart.

As the man claims his knee is broken, the suspect briefly disappears before returning and appearing to throw something at the man, opening a wound above his eyebrow.

“Mitch, get me out of here,” he says from the ground. “Where are the guys?”

Some people can be seen and heard mocking him as he waits for help, including one wearing a sweater with an inverted red triangle, a symbol popularized by Hamas terrorists.

“Kyle” accompanied Hancock “to help ensure her safety after other protesters threatened her for recording the public event,” lawyer and Toronto city council candidate Caryma Sa’d said on X.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, a video shared by prominent account known as Leviathan ( @l3v1at4an ) on Sunday captured what appeared to be the assault of a pro-Israel counter-demonstrator.

The edited clip begins with two older women already on the ground, one of whom kicks towards a younger brown-haired woman standing over her, who responds with a kick of her own. A Montreal police vehicle pulls up to block the scene, an officer quickly hops out to intervene and the camera follows to show one of the women leaning over the other.

As it continues, police are seen detaining and speaking to the younger woman, before cutting to one of the older women appearing to cry while her friend checks on her. By the video’s end, the apparent victim is on her feet and demonstrating again.

In an extremely rare sighting, Montreal police arrest a far left female Palestine protestor after she slammed an elderly woman to the concrete for holding an Israel flag.

It only takes physical elder abuse against Jews to get @spvm to act on hate crimes. pic.twitter.com/1No4NeSuvl

— Leviathan (@l3v1at4an) October 11, 2026

National Post has contacted Montreal police for more information.

Anyone with information regarding the Toronto incident is asked to contact police at 416-808-3500 or anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS (8477) or online .

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Washington is gearing up for next year’s review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, but signs of negotiating progress have come mainly from the U.S.-Mexico trade teams in recent weeks, while formal talks between the U.S. and Canada remain stalled.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says he speaks frequently with Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, but there have been no formal meetings between the U.S. and Canadian sides since talks collapsed in August.

The Mexican and U.S. teams met for a round of formal talks in July and were supposed to meet again in September, but that has been postponed, likely until sometime this month.

Mexico’s Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard recently expressed optimism that new agreements are coming soon. “We are getting closer on many issues, resolving problems, and we are making progress,” he said at last week’s G-20 meeting in Milwaukee, Wisc., after meeting with Greer. “Every day we are closer to reaching new agreements.”

Washington has opened public consultations for next year’s CUSMA review while maintaining bilateral engagement with Mexico — and not with Canada, which raises concerns about Ottawa’s ability to influence the process. Experts say there is no reason for Canada to panic, but they also warn that a Mexican agreement could set terms that Washington later expects Ottawa to accept.

Mexico was seemingly on the back burner while Canada made progress in late summer, said Diego Marroquín Bitar, a fellow with the Americas Program at Washington’s CSIS.

“The Canadians made a lot of progress before negotiations collapsed,” he said. “So they could jump back … to the negotiation table at any moment and be very close to where the Mexicans are actually.”

The arrangement the U.S. and Mexico are working toward centres on tariff relief and policy concessions, rather than a comprehensive rewrite of CUSMA.

Marroquín Bitar referred to it as a “skinny deal,” or a preliminary bilateral deal, that would give Mexico tariff relief in exchange for domestic-policy concessions and closer alignment with U.S. trade policy toward non-market economies.

This could help prepare the ground for the 2027 CUSMA review, he said, but it’s not a final settlement or replacement for the trilateral agreement.

Carlo Dade, director of international policy and the New North America Initiative at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, agrees.

“Mexico can sign an agreement on reciprocal trade with the U.S. to set a new tariff regime and to set a new economic security regime,” he said, noting that USTR calls them agreements on reciprocal trade.

Dade also rejects the notion that Canada is being left out, noting that not every communication is shared with the public.

“I wouldn’t read this as necessarily being sidelined,” he said.

As for what Mexico and the U.S. could hash out bilaterally, there are a number of issues, but trade experts believe it will largely focus on immediate issues while laying a path for continued talks on tougher debates.

“I think there’s a lot that bilaterally can be addressed without Canada,” said Inu Manak, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, pointing to energy investments and reform in Mexico, labour reform and enforcement, including collective bargaining rights, Mexico’s external trade policies, and some agricultural disputes over seasonal produce.

Still, the bilateral bargains are closely tied to CUSMA’s future, as Washington is using the prospect of renewal to press for settlements on other trade disputes, according to Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“The way that the Trump administration has taken this, the review, as you know from last year, is to hold the renewal of the agreement hostage until other trade issues are resolved,” he said.

One possible development that could really impact Canada, trade watchers say, is an agreement on sectoral tariffs. Any settlement by Mexico on the Section 232 tariffs, Marroquín Bitar warned, could become Canada’s benchmark.

“Whatever Mexico accepts in this interim deal will very likely become the floor rather than the ceiling for whatever Canada negotiates when it eventually returns to the table,” he said. “Every Mexican concession becomes the opening term of Canada’s negotiations.”

Manak largely agreed and pointed to the automotive industry.

“So let’s say Mexico can negotiate down … from the 25 per cent … auto or auto parts tariff, a tariff at 15 per cent or lower, for example … that would be something that would create … a baseline even for Canada,” she said.

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, also expressed concern over this, noting that the U.S. is unlikely to agree to a better deal for Canada later.

“If Mexico agrees to it, I find it difficult to believe that the Trump administration would … be open to being flexible when it comes to Canada specifically,” he said.

Even if Canada’s formal talks remain on hold, Sands says closer Canada–Mexico ties could help Ottawa stay informed about Washington’s demands.

“What we will have now that we didn’t have reliably before is … a Mexico-Canada dialogue where I’m sure they’ll pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, this is what the Americans are asking us to … sign, and here’s where we’re trying to modify it,’” Sands said.

And while this approach may not stop Washington from using a “divide and conquer” approach, Sands said he thinks the “Mexicans are … trying anyway to be much better partners.”

“They may be forced to do a bilateral on security, or just a U.S.-Mexico agreement on some aspect, but I think they want to keep the band together.”

Changes to CUSMA itself, however, require agreement among all three countries.

“Any changes to the agreement would need the concurrence of all three parties,” said Dade.

Marroquín Bitar said any deal the U.S. and Mexico might strike this autumn would leave broader trilateral issues — including rules of origin — for the next phase.

He referred to this as merely the beginning of a “15-round fight.”

“It’s going to be a very long and painful process, but I think USMCA will survive it,” he added.

“It’s not going to be the same agreement that we have now, but it’s still going to be a framework that’s going to give Mexico and Canada, I think, better market access compared to any other country or any other trading block in the world.”

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