The collapse of the U.S.-Canada trade deal is providing a rare glimpse into the secret world of international trade negotiations.
Beyond just the insider view, we are being given hope that the mirage of “Fortress North America” can be put to rest.
From the day President Trump returned to office, Mexico has aggressively pitched the necessity of “Fortress North America”. One month into the Administration, in February 2025, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that Mexican leaders had proposed matching U.S. tariffs on China, repeating Mexico’s “Fortress North America” framing.
On May 9th, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said “Like Mexico, Canada remains open to deeper integration, including options for ‘Fortress North America’ in selected sectors.”
By May 28th, in a fireside chat following his remarks at the Economic Club of New York, Carney said “These are core areas. It’s our strong view, and we’ve been clear about this, that a Fortress North America in autos, in steel, in aluminum, that’s in everyone’s interest.”
Those three sectors were flagged by Carney because they were the three subject to high profile Section 232 national security investigations in President Trump’s first term.
The steel and aluminum actions resulted in nominal 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs early in 2018, but both Canada and Mexico were promptly awarded total exemptions. More exemptions would follow.
The Automotive Section 232 report, delivered to the President in February 2019, offered three alternative recommendations: 25% tariff on all cars; a 35% tariff on SUVs/CUVs; or, forego tariffs and instead jawbone some USMCA ‘rules’ with Canada and Mexico on requiring a higher level of North American content before a car could become eligible for USMCA duty-free status. Assurances from automakers convinced the President to accept the latter.
The result was a heightened ‘rule of origin’ for automotive imports in USMCA, considered the flagship improvement over NAFTA. It went so far as to include a headline-grabbing $16/hour wage requirement, although this would only ever apply to a minority of workers under an absurdly complicated formula. (More on this failure below).
The USMCA Automotive result was instructive to free traders in Canada and Mexico: avoid U.S. tariffs by pitching North American integration and heightened ‘rules of origin’.
Mexico isn’t giving up. On August 30, even in the fallout of the Canada deal, Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard assured his colleagues “El año que entra seguramente el debate internacional ya no van a ser los aranceles, van a ser las reglas de origen.” (Translation: “Next year, the international debate will likely no longer be about tariffs, but about rules of origin.”)
We’ll see about that.
Despite Carney’s earlier supportive remarks on tariff harmonization for steel, aluminum, and automotive, Carney either had a massive change of heart, or never understood the request to involve raising tariffs on those sectors for countries outside the ‘fortress’.
On August 22, announcing the collapse of the talks, the Prime Minister framed the U.S. tariff harmonization request as follows: “The U.S. introduced, in the last hours, efforts to restrict our ability to have other trade deals. Because we believe in free trade, we’re the partner of choice, in many respects, for countries around the world, and Americans wanted to restrict that, they had language to restrict that. Unacceptable.”
Greer was clearly exasperated following the Canadian pivot. “For a year and a half,” Greer told CBC, Canadian officials have been coming to Washington advocating a “Fortress North America” — “their term, not mine.” If the United States is going to lower its national-security tariffs for Canada, it expects its partners to “also protect their borders.” What USTR wants is “mutual protection”: “we can’t have Canada be a place where you can get flooded with steel and aluminum from other countries and be used as a back door into the U.S.”
Greer doubled down on calling out Canada in his CBC interview: “Fortress North America, you can say it, but when it gets down to brass tacks and you want to actually collectively protect this market and these critical sectors, they’re not gonna do it.”
Thank heavens. Greer was correct in his expectation, but it’s been clear for a decade that neither Canada nor Mexico would pull back tariff concessions in their other FTAs.
The “Fortress North America” pitch is understandable to anyone who grew up playing Risk, the classic board game. Consolidate the continent to unlock tremendous gains! But in the real world there is no prospect of a genuine North American tariff perimeter, and forgoing important sectoral tariffs for more ‘rules of origin’ was always going to be a terrible trade.
This article explains why substituting a common North American external tariff for U.S. home-market tariffs is a fruitless, counterproductive goal—and why tariff-harmonization efforts to date have proved immensely harmful to American manufacturing.
A single, European-style customs union for North America that encompasses various national currencies and legislatures is also an unworkable and bad idea, but those arguments are beyond the scope of this article.
The “Fortress North America” Mirage: Why Tariff Harmonization Will Never Work
The collapse of the U.S.-Canada trade deal is providing a rare glimpse into the secret world of international trade negotiations.
Beyond just the insider view, we are being given hope that the mirage of “Fortress North America” can be put to rest.
From the day President Trump returned to office, Mexico has aggressively pitched the necessity of “Fortress North America”. One month into the Administration, in February 2025, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that Mexican leaders had proposed matching U.S. tariffs on China, repeating Mexico’s “Fortress North America” framing.
On May 9th, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said “Like Mexico, Canada remains open to deeper integration, including options for ‘Fortress North America’ in selected sectors.”
By May 28th, in a fireside chat following his remarks at the Economic Club of New York, Carney said “These are core areas. It’s our strong view, and we’ve been clear about this, that a Fortress North America in autos, in steel, in aluminum, that’s in everyone’s interest.”
Those three sectors were flagged by Carney because they were the three subject to high profile Section 232 national security investigations in President Trump’s first term.
The steel and aluminum actions resulted in nominal 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs early in 2018, but both Canada and Mexico were promptly awarded total exemptions. More exemptions would follow.
The Automotive Section 232 report, delivered to the President in February 2019, offered three alternative recommendations: 25% tariff on all cars; a 35% tariff on SUVs/CUVs; or, forego tariffs and instead jawbone some USMCA ‘rules’ with Canada and Mexico on requiring a higher level of North American content before a car could become eligible for USMCA duty-free status. Assurances from automakers convinced the President to accept the latter.
The result was a heightened ‘rule of origin’ for automotive imports in USMCA, considered the flagship improvement over NAFTA. It went so far as to include a headline-grabbing $16/hour wage requirement, although this would only ever apply to a minority of workers under an absurdly complicated formula. (More on this failure below).
The USMCA Automotive result was instructive to free traders in Canada and Mexico: avoid U.S. tariffs by pitching North American integration and heightened ‘rules of origin’.
Mexico isn’t giving up. On August 30, even in the fallout of the Canada deal, Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard assured his colleagues “El año que entra seguramente el debate internacional ya no van a ser los aranceles, van a ser las reglas de origen.” (Translation: “Next year, the international debate will likely no longer be about tariffs, but about rules of origin.”)
We’ll see about that.
Despite Carney’s earlier supportive remarks on tariff harmonization for steel, aluminum, and automotive, Carney either had a massive change of heart, or never understood the request to involve raising tariffs on those sectors for countries outside the ‘fortress’.
On August 22, announcing the collapse of the talks, the Prime Minister framed the U.S. tariff harmonization request as follows: “The U.S. introduced, in the last hours, efforts to restrict our ability to have other trade deals. Because we believe in free trade, we’re the partner of choice, in many respects, for countries around the world, and Americans wanted to restrict that, they had language to restrict that. Unacceptable.”
Greer was clearly exasperated following the Canadian pivot. “For a year and a half,” Greer told CBC, Canadian officials have been coming to Washington advocating a “Fortress North America” — “their term, not mine.” If the United States is going to lower its national-security tariffs for Canada, it expects its partners to “also protect their borders.” What USTR wants is “mutual protection”: “we can’t have Canada be a place where you can get flooded with steel and aluminum from other countries and be used as a back door into the U.S.”
Greer doubled down on calling out Canada in his CBC interview: “Fortress North America, you can say it, but when it gets down to brass tacks and you want to actually collectively protect this market and these critical sectors, they’re not gonna do it.”
Thank heavens. Greer was correct in his expectation, but it’s been clear for a decade that neither Canada nor Mexico would pull back tariff concessions in their other FTAs.
The “Fortress North America” pitch is understandable to anyone who grew up playing Risk, the classic board game. Consolidate the continent to unlock tremendous gains! But in the real world there is no prospect of a genuine North American tariff perimeter, and forgoing important sectoral tariffs for more ‘rules of origin’ was always going to be a terrible trade.
This article explains why substituting a common North American external tariff for U.S. home-market tariffs is a fruitless, counterproductive goal—and why tariff-harmonization efforts to date have proved immensely harmful to American manufacturing.
A single, European-style customs union for North America that encompasses various national currencies and legislatures is also an unworkable and bad idea, but those arguments are beyond the scope of this article.
First, Acknowledge What the Fortress Concedes
Before the political and technical flaws, we should acknowledge what the very idea concedes. The “Fortress North America” proposals from Canada and Mexico require the U.S. to concede that unlimited cross-border price competition with Canada and Mexico is worthwhile, even as workers in both countries earn less.
International free trade — cross-border price competition — is a race to the bottom, full stop. The jurisdiction with the lowest labor and environmental standards soaks up the investment.
Within a nation, federal preemption across policy spaces backstops the race to the bottom. Not just on labor and environment, but on policy areas from intellectual property to consumer protection, antitrust to anti-corruption.
Wherever production moves inside the United States, a common federal policy floor – girded by a real judiciary – moves with it.
No such floor follows a factory across the Rio Grande or the St. Lawrence.
For that reason alone, “Fortress North America” should be dropped.
But assume you still believe in unlimited cross-border price competition with Canada and Mexico. Even on its own terms, the fortress is a mirage that can never be built, and no U.S. jobs should be sacrificed in its pursuit.
The Emptiness of Fortress North America Claims Was Apparent Long Before Carney’s Explicit Rejection
Carney’s explicit refusal to harmonize steel and aluminum tariffs – calling the request “Unacceptable” – was a welcome and rare instance of candor to those who have watched Canada and Mexico’s simultaneous embrace of global free trade while touting a walled-off North America.
Greer’s “they’re not gonna do it” acknowledgment could have been confidently said at any point in the last ten years.
Many Americans remember the 2016 election fight over the Trans Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement with eleven other Pacific-rim nations, including Canada and Mexico. During the campaign, then candidate Donald Trump said TPP was a “another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country.” He withdrew the U.S. from TPP as soon as he took office in January, 2017.
What is not widely known in the United States is that after U.S. withdrawal, the other eleven nations continued on with the deal, renaming it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or “CP-TPP”. They did this while they were re-negotiating NAFTA into USMCA.
Canada and Mexico haven’t stopped driving CP-TPP expansion. Costa Rica and Uruguay are wrapping up negotiations to join, and the UAE, Philippines and Indonesia are in formal negotiations. In June 2026, the Sheinbaum government completed Mexico’s ratification of the United Kingdom’s accession to CP-TPP, allowing the country to become the 12th nation to join the bloc.
Vietnam and Malaysia are CP-TPP founding members of this pact.
A recent CP-TPP-wide analysis from New Zealand’s trade ministry reported that 93.6% of tariff lines were duty-free within the CP-TPP bloc, and that percentage will grow to 98.8% as implementation continues to phase-in.
How is such a far-flung, massive free trade regime compatible with a North American “fortress”? Someone needs to put that question explicitly to Carney and Sheinbaum.
Canada and Mexico Won’t Even Say No To China Joining CP-TPP
China aims to join the CPTPP as well. Earlier this year, China’s Commerce Minister, Wang Wentao, while discussing China’s trade strategy for the 15th Five-Year Plan, said China would “[c]ontinue advancing accession to the [CP-TPP]”.
On July 15th, MOFCOM’s China Free Trade Area Service Network reported that China was “steadily advancing” accession to the CPTPP.
Accession to CP-TPP requires consensus. Any single member holds a free, quiet, procedurally trivial veto. However despite their Fortress North America rhetoric, neither Canada nor Mexico has ever been willing to say no to China. Not once. Governments supposedly eager to wall China out of North America cannot bring themselves to pronounce a one-word veto over China’s application to their global free trade agreement.
Thus, for anyone who wants a simple test of the Fortress North America concept, ask: are Canada and Mexico willing to reopen their steel, aluminum and automotive concessions in the CP-TPP? If not, the conversation can end right there.
Refusing To Touch Other FTAs Further Negates Harmonization
While China’s accession to the CP-TPP is a simple test of political seriousness, an honest assessment would ask whether Canada, Mexico, or, for that matter, the United States, were willing to revisit tariff concessions to any other country.
When the United States re-affirmed its steel and aluminum tariffs in February 2025, it ended all country-exemptions. The whole world faced the same tariff rate.
While not formally withdrawing its FTA, or WTO (more on this in a moment) steel, aluminum and automotive tariff commitments, the United States had effectively nullified them.
Mexico and Canada have refused to do the same.
Mexico boasts 14 free-trade agreements covering 52 countries, plus nine limited-scope agreements through the Latin American Integration Association. Canada has 15 free trade agreements covering 52 countries, and has six active comprehensive free trade negotiations aside from CP-TPP accession. This includes one with India.
Both countries have steadfastly refused to revisit the schedule of concessions under any of their FTAs.
So again, what Fortress?
The ‘Fortress North America’ Pandering We’ve Gotten Since 2018
While neither Canada nor Mexico is willing to withdraw its steel and aluminum tariffs in its FTAs, they have been willing to offer various figleaf concessions towards their Fortress pitch.
This song and dance that began in the run-up to USMCA continued throughout the Biden Administration, and, per Secretary Ebrard’s Aug. 30 remarks quoted above, remain Mexico’s game plan.
Disastrous Failure No. 1: the 2019 Steel and Aluminum Agreements That Facilitated Import Surges, Circumvention, and US Plant Closures
In May 2019, USTR announced it had reached agreements on steel and aluminum with both Canada and Mexico. Under the agreements, American manufacturers were assured that there would be “aggressive monitoring” and that if covered metal imports “surged meaningfully beyond historic volumes of trade”, then the Section 232 tariffs would be restored.
The agreements also promised to “[p]revent the transshipment of aluminum and steel made outside of [North America].”
The agreements weren’t worth the paper they were written on.
Mexico comprehensively violated its promise to avoid export surges, as CPA has documented: by 2023, steel mill shipments ran 36% over baseline, Chapter 72 iron and steel imports were 134% over, and electrical steel conduit – the humble pipe carrying wiring through every American building – 472% over baseline, heading for nearly 700%, until Mexico controlled 87% of U.S. electrical steel conduit imports.
It wasn’t just the surge, either, but also the transshipment, despite the “aggressive monitoring” promised in the agreement. The transshipment of Chinese metal via Mexico into the United States continued, and without any tariffs or quota to control import penetration, the predictable result happened. American mills were shuttered as Mexico took the market.
USTR took note of the deal’s failure. On February 16, 2024, USTR issued a readout of a meeting with Mexico stating that “Ambassador Tai stressed the urgent need for Mexico to take immediate and meaningful steps to address the ongoing surge of Mexican steel and aluminum exports to the United States and the lack of transparency regarding Mexico’s steel and aluminum imports from third countries.”
Mexico once again managed to dodge tariffs, however, despite scoffing off every aspect of the 2019 Agreement.
Instead of tariffs, Mexico successfully sold the Biden Administration on another rules-based arrangement. Under it, steel from Mexico retained duty-free treatment only if melted and poured in the United States, Canada, or Mexico. Aluminum from Mexico avoided the 10% duty if it was not smelt or cast in China, Russia, Belarus, or Iran.
But North American rules of origin keeps American mills and fabricators in a price competition they cannot win. The rules are also fruitless because they remain critically undermined by scoping issues (discussed below), varying metal costs across the three countries, and fail to learn from the disastrous North American Automotive Rule of Origin.
Throughout this time period, U.S. production of steel and aluminum shrank.
For steel:
For aluminum:
Disastrous Failure No. 2: The USMCA Automotive Rule of Origin
On March 26, 2025, President Trump imposed the global 25% tariff that should have happened in 2019.
The Proclamation noted diplomatically that USMCA’s Automotive Rule of Origin had been a bust: “the revisions to the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, have not yielded sufficient positive outcomes.”
The numbers don’t lie:
Put simply: Mexico sends us 20 light vehicles for every 1 light vehicle we send to Mexico.
And that happens because Mexico has lower wages, and USMCA continued the NAFTA promise to automakers of unlimited U.S. market penetration for Mexican vehicles.
The USMCA Automotive Rule of Origin didn’t change that core outsourcing promise.
On July 1, 2026, USTR issued a report on the failure of the USMCA Automotive Rule, noting that while doing nothing to stop outsourcing to Mexico, the new rules even failed at their ‘Fortress North America’ goal:
“the United States has run a persistent, substantial, and growing trade deficit in autos and parts with Mexico for over 30 years. In 2024, that deficit peaked at $138.2 billion. In recent years, analysis indicates that the share of U.S. content within Mexico’s automotive exports to the United States has been declining, while the share of Chinese or other Asian content in those goods has been increasing.”
Indeed, beyond just car parts, Chinese car brands are surging in Mexico, now enjoying roughly 17% of Mexico’s new-vehicle market, up from 0.5% in 2019.
Regrettably, despite this reality and USTR’s acknowledgment, the Foreword indicated a doubling down on tougher North American ‘rules’ as opposed to controlling import penetration: “Through strategic improvements, USTR seeks to raise regional and U.S. content, reduce reliance on inputs from third-countries, and build a more resilient and secure supply chain”.
Conjured-up academic rules which contemplate one nation’s entire industry being offshored so long as the competition was ‘fair’ should be a non-starter.
Americans should ask: will Mexico get to keep its 20:1 car trade balance under these new rules? Is a 25:1 balance a possible outcome under any revised rules? Why can’t we aim for a 1:1 balance?
Instead of rule revisions, USTR should be negotiating firm, outcome-oriented measures, like quota caps on the amount of vehicles imported. This is not novel. For example, in USTR’s May 2025 US-UK trade deal, rather than rules, the UK was put on a quota: 100,000 cars at a 10% tariff, 25% thereafter.
Disastrous Failure No. 3: Another USTR “Monitoring Agreement” for Mexico Hollows Out US Capacity to Build Transformers, Highlighting ‘Scoping’ Issues for Steel and Aluminum Tariff Actions
Grain-oriented electrical steel, “GOES”, is the specialty steel at the heart of every grid transformer.
Despite being such a critical material, North America has only one mill left that melts GOES: Cleveland-Cliffs’ Butler Works, located in western Pennsylvania. Neither Canada nor Mexico produce GOES.
But ‘Fortress North America’ thinking has kept Butler Works on its knees. It almost shut down in 2024.
Butler Works has struggled due to scoping issues inherent in tariff actions involving primary metals.
When the government or industry talk about the “steel” and “aluminum” tariffs, they’re referring to the two Section 232 tariff actions that include many products beyond the two core metals, while still failing to include a lot of downstream products.
For example: large steel home appliances, like refrigerators and washing machines, were finally added to the Section 232 steel action in June 2025. But other large steel products, like gun safes, are as yet not included.
Putting a tariff on a manufacturing input while allowing the downstream product made of that input to enter duty-free or at a lower tariff rate leads to the problem of ‘tariff inversion’, a dangerous outcome where tariff policy drives offshoring. This is why ‘scoping’ – ensuring products liable to tariff inversion are covered by corresponding protective tariffs – is so important.
Transformers, which are critical equipment for our civilization’s existence, became a perfect case study for tariff inversion and scoping problems.
While the 2018 steel tariff did cover GOES, it did not extend to the laminations and cores one step downstream of the metal. And the obvious solution to the scoping problem – inclusion of transformer parts in the downstream tariffs – was stalled for seven years due to ‘Fortress North America’ ideology.
The arbitrage assembled itself immediately after the tariff action: Japanese GOES was slit, stacked or wound in Canada and Mexico – an alteration so minor that GOES remains 70–90% of the article’s value – and the slightly-modified GOES components could then enter the United States tariff-free.
Because GOES was part of the 2018 tariff, imports fell 56% in 2019. But because the laminations were not covered, import penetration reached 88%.
Between 2020 and 2025, roughly 95–98% of both countries’ exports of transformer parts were a simple tariff scoping arbitrage play to the United States. Neither country built a components industry. They built a tariff bypass.
In May 2020, in response to this obvious problem, Commerce launched a new Section 232 investigation into transformers and transformer components. That October, the investigation formally found that “transformer laminations, stacked cores and wound cores are being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security.”
But despite this finding, ‘Fortress North America’ logic scuttled an actual fix.
Instead of tariffs on transformers and transformer parts, we got another monitoring agreement: Mexico would operate “a strict monitoring regime”.
In exchange for a promise to monitor, Mexican transformer laminations and cores would “not be subject to any action” under Section 232.
The monitoring regime then monitored the following: imports rising every single year, up 321% by 2024 over 2018, from $126 million to $527 million.
Fortunately, by the time the Trump Administration returned to office in 2025, the problem was so widespread that the revised steel and aluminum tariff actions introduced an “inclusion” process wherein producers of downstream steel and aluminum products could petition to add their products to the respective tariff action.
That finally happened in August, 2025. However, Census data now runs ten months past the inclusion, and imports have not fallen a dollar. Roughly $40 million a month before, $40 million a month since, because the entrenched arbitrage doesn’t flinch at a 25% tariff.
What played out with GOES applies to countless other downstream metal products still outside the scope of the steel tariffs: from boats to bicycles, from gun safes to golf carts.
Canada and Mexico’s fig leaf steel and aluminum tariff maneuvers do nothing to build a ‘fortress’
Given Canada and Mexico’s refusal to withdraw CP-TPP concessions, or any other FTA concession, why has USTR even been willing to entertain Fortress North America talk?
Well, besides the fact that most large American enterprises have long since restructured their manufacturing footprint to leverage lower Mexican wages and want to preserve that, Mexico in particular has been clever about offering some fig leaf steps over the last several years.
In short, Mexico has been willing to:
The latter step, a pause in new FTAs, can be dismissed out of hand now, as we’ve already covered its existing 52 FTAs plus additional tariff preference agreements.
But the first policy fig leaf, Mexico’s tariff increase on non-FTA countries, needs to be addressed, because it’s the kind of step that seems positive to DC policymakers who don’t have a firm grasp of international trade and global supply chains but love foreign intrigue.
First, credit to Mexico, because unlike Canada and the U.S., they never gave away the farm to the WTO in Geneva.
Whereas Canada and the U.S. committed either duty-free treatment or trifling, sub-10% tariff rates across steel and aluminum to every other WTO country via the mothership of FTAs, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”), Mexico retained the flexibility to charge tariffs up to 35% across those sectors.
That’s the reason why the U.S. was successfully sued at the WTO when we raised our steel and aluminum tariffs.
Meanwhile, back in August of 2023, Mexico was able to increase steel tariffs without any WTO pushback, and with a round of supporting applause from USTR.
Mexico has played this hand several times over now, approximating changes – for non-FTA imports only – U.S. changes which the U.S. applies globally.
When the Sheinbaum government raised WTO tariffs to 25–35% on more downstream steel and aluminum products at the beginning of this year, President Sheinbaum stressed the opposite of what Washington wanted to hear: the increases are “not a coercive measure against China”. Mexico also declined to follow the U.S. lead on tariffs for Chinese EVs, unlike Canada.
Mexico talks one game at home, another in Washington, and still yet another overseas.
Beyond maintaining duty-free treatment for over fifty countries, Mexico has also been selective in which duties not to harmonize.
Notably, Mexico, which has no primary aluminum production capacity, has declined to impose any tariffs on primary aluminum. This has caused an extraordinary divergence in U.S. and Mexican aluminum prices:
If ‘Fortress North America’ were ever a real thing, with true tariff harmonization across steel, aluminum, and automobiles, this kind of wild metal cost discrepancy would not exist.
So long as metal price disparity exists, it provides yet another easy reference point to dismiss the fortress pitch.
Let Mexico close the dollar-per-pound discrepancy on aluminum costs first, and then come talk to us about Fortress North America.
CPA recently published a report on how this aluminum pricing difference should foreclose the prospect of any aluminum tariff concessions to Mexico, and why stronger relief for downstream aluminum products is necessary.
Do Not Pay 25 Points for a Vibe
Greer is right: Canada’s ideological embrace of global free trade is incompatible with America’s reshoring goals on steel, aluminum, and automotive.
But recognizing the problem does not make any kind of approximate tariff harmonization across steel and aluminum viable, whether it’s a North American or U.S.-Mexican perimeter.
While Canada’s embrace of global free trade has served that country terribly, and will continue to do so, we can at least thank the Prime Minister for his candor about his commitment.
But Mexico is not going to dismantle its 52-country treaty network, or take any steps that would increase its input costs to match America’s.
Their governments may raise WTO rates and liberally use words like “aggressive” in press releases and agreement texts. But that is not tariff harmonization, and not worth any tariff concession for a fortress that exists only in press releases.
The worst outcome is asymmetric integration: high U.S. prices created by comprehensive Section 232 protection, combined with lower-cost Canadian and Mexican production that retains access to third-country inputs under different tariff rules, followed by preferential access for the resulting articles into the United States. That is not Fortress North America. It is a tariff arbitrage system.
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
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