Rudyard Griffiths and Sean Speer discuss President Trump&#x27;s decision not to renew CUSMA and its implications. They examine the Trump administration&#x27;s shift toward tariffs as a fiscal and economic strategy, driven by America&#x27;s deteriorating debt situation. They also explore whether Canada should negotiate now or wait until after U.S. midterms, the likelihood of additional tariffs despite existing trade protections, and how the Carney government should respond to mounting economic uncertainty and manufacturing job losses. The Hub is Canada’s fastest growing independent digital news outlet. Subscribe to The Hub&#x27;s podcast feed to get our best content when you are on the go: https://tinyurl.com/3a7zpd7e (Apple) https://tinyurl.com/y8akmfn7 (Spotify) Follow The Hub on X: https://x.com/thehubcanada?lang=en CREDITS: Amal Attar-Guzman - Producer and Editor Rudyard Griffiths and Sean Speer- Hosts Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press - Photo Credit Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump won't renew CUSMA: What's next for Canada-U.S. trade?

Hub Podcasts

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Hub Podcasts

## Participants

- **Rudyard Griffiths** (None)
- **Sean Speer** (None)

## Transcript

He went and did it. Donald Trump not renewing the North America Free Trade Agreement with Canada raises a lot of uncertainty about the trading relationship between our two countries and what happens next. To help break it all down, I'm joined by Sean Speer, my co-founder and editor at large for this edition of Hub Hits. Hey Sean, while it fell on Canada Day, there you go, nice president from the president.

We received notification that we will not be renewing the agreement as per the deadline. So what happens next, Sean? What is the next potential shoe to fall here? Yeah, so we're now kind of in a holding pattern, Roger. According to the agreement, it will have to be reviewed annually before it fully expires in the middle of the next decade.

But the president, the people around him have signaled they don't want to wait that long, that they want to enter into some kind of renegotiation that produces a different type of agreement.

And what I think is interesting, Roger, going back to when we first started talking about this issue as far ago as November 2024, we signaled, that is you and I and the team at the Hub, that people needed to be prepared to live in a world where tariffs became the norm. That free trade, as we had come to know it was probably not going to remain in place.

And in addition to this step on the part of the administration of signaling its intention to eventually wind down the USMCA to a series of public posts this week by Stephen Marin, a senior advisor to the president, and someone who I've come to see as sort of intellectualizing Trump's instincts on tariffs and economics, I think reinforces the idea that for a whole host of reasons, economic, fiscal, political, etc.

We're really in a world where we're trying to minimize tariffs on Canadian exports entering the US market, probably not in a world where we're eliminating them altogether.

There's been a lot of cheerleading, understandably, Sean, that regardless of this deadline passing, we're still in a sense protected by NAFTA, according to the Bank of Montreal and their economics unit, roughly a 5% to 6% tariff as a gross kind of levy on all trade, even when you add in the different, much more intense and much more painful sectoral tariffs.

I'm wondering, Sean, if that's not a little bit of hope that we seem to be seeing, do we not, Sean, some indication from the administration that just because NAFTA is now into this kind of perpetual renewal scenario or perpetual negotiation scenario, hopefully towards an eventual renewal or not,

that doesn't constrain the government of the United States in any way from layering additional trade levies, demands. And to go back to Stephen Maron's kind of analysis here and what we've seen in Europe and Japan and elsewhere vis-a-vis the Trump administration, doesn't it seem like the risk remains of some ki...

Trump won't renew CUSMA: What's next for Canada-U.S. trade?

Transcript

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Trump won't renew CUSMA: What's next for Canada-U.S. trade?

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.