Coverage of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) review often focuses on the inflammatory remarks and actions of President Donald Trump. There’s a good reason for this, as Trump’s whims do seem to drive policy choices to a large degree, including in matters of war (Iran) and especially with respect to trade. .

However, in 2026 at least, Trump has been rather silent about the CUSMA review, which he has left in the hands of United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer. And though the U.S. holds a lot of leverage in trade talks with Canada and Mexico starting this month, the fate of the agreement ultimately lies with all three countries.

The CCPA has commented on what Greer seems to want out of the review elsewhere. This article considers what we recently learned about the Mexican government’s objectives.

For Mexico, CUSMA review negotiations with the USTR will begin March 16. While Canada’s Minister of Internal Trade Dominic LeBlanc introduced Greer to Canada’s new ambassador, Mark Wiseman, and lead negotiator Janice Charette recently, it’s not clear when Canada-U.S. bilateral talks will begin.

On March 9, the Mexican Secretariat of the Economy Marcelo Ebrard presented “The Results of the Consultation Tables”, detailing what the Mexican government heard from thousands of businesses, industry associations, academics, unions and social groups. Ebrard heralded the consultations, which lasted 60 days, as a feat of transparent governance—an example of how diverse his “Team Mexico” was going into the review.

The process heard from 30 different sectors across all of Mexico’s federal states on a range of key issues related to the agreement. Additionally, Ebrard held consultations with labour unions jointly with the Secretariat of Labour and Social Welfare. While the resulting document is not a legally binding list of the Mexican government’s key priorities, it demonstrates what Mexican stakeholders are saying about CUSMA and which comments the Mexican government emphasizes as relevant to its strategic reflection going into the review.

The message from the consultation summary is clear: Mexico seeks to maintain CUSMA, avoiding any substantial reopening or renegotiating of chapters. Changes that could be made to the agreement lie not within the “substantive commitments of CUSMA, but rather on improving its implementation, strengthening existing mechanisms and reducing the frictions that affect the day-to-day functioning of productive integration.”

Mexican stakeholders made it clear to the Mexican government that CUSMA is an important tool that ought to be preserved, even if there are clear limitations or issues with the trilateral agreement. President Claudia Sheinbaum, seemingly, has taken this view as a centrepiece for Mexico’s goals leading into the review, saying in February, “it will remain in place because it is beneficial for the three countries.”

During the consultation summary, participants identified a few key items as central to improving or maintaining a well-functioning regional economy.

Firstly, CUSMA’s rules-of-origin (ROO) were an important piece of discussion, with a range of diverging opinions, depending on the sector consulted. These rules define, based on regional content or value, what goods or products can be said to be wholly obtained or produced in North America and therefore qualify for tariff-free access from one North American country to another.

In Mexico’s automotive, electronics, aerospace and medical device industries, the core concern is to maintain the current rules of origin without any additional tightening (i.e., raising of the minimum regional value or content quota). Meanwhile, in the chemical, plastic, agribusiness and steel-aluminum industries, there is an insistence on strengthening the rules of origin.

Stronger rules would seek to limit the circulation of cheap products from Asian countries that enter North American supply chains (often as industrial inputs to subsequent manufacturing) without meeting CUSMA’s content requirements. For the automotive industry, which already has stricter content requirements than other sectors in CUSMA, stricter rules of origin could create production bottlenecks, increase the cost of inputs and affect regional supply chains, especially in an industry that uses ‘just in time’ production models, the report highlights.

Rules of origin debates were closely tied to another major concern in the consultations: unfair competition from Asian countries. Mexican stakeholders called on the government to address imports from Asia with a coordinated regional position (perhaps including mirroring U.S. tariffs) and domestic capacity building to address undervaluation and the technical smuggling of inputs into North American supply chains.

Unsurprisingly, tariffs were a key issue for business participants in the consultations. The results highlight roundtable discussions in the steel, aluminum, metalworking and electronics industries, where U.S. tariffs were acknowledged as creating uncertainty for the regional supply chain, raising costs and distorting intraregional trade. Removing those tariffs, however, may prove difficult, as Trump and USTR Greer seem insistent on maintaining tariffs for all products that are not CUSMA compliant.

These industry roundtables in Mexico were accompanied by two union dialogues, which focused primarily on the operation of CUSMA’s Chapter 23 (Labour). The report highlights union agreement to continue advances in Mexican labour conditions, resulting from increases in the minimum wage and the ongoing transition to a 40-hour work week.

CUSMA’s novel Rapid Response Labour Mechanism (RRLM), which sought to provide an international legal instrument for investigating labour rights violations and enforcing remedies, is seen as important for detecting employers’ anti-union actions. However, the summary emphasizes consensus around sharp criticism of the RRLM as well. Asymmetries in its application only in Mexico and the perceived lack of exhaustion of all national remedies by those using the RRLM were highlighted as priorities in the report.

Some labour participants in the Mexican consultation suggested expanding the scope of the RRLM to strategic sectors such as tourism and agro-industry. Overall, though, labour dialogue findings centred on the need to preserve Mexico’s labour sovereignty by strengthening an understanding of the nation’s labour reform efforts and ensuring that the RRLM and CUSMA do not put pressure on or weaken internal institutional capacity.

The desire to address asymmetry aligns closely with the recommendations of a range of U.S. and Canadian unions, who’ve suggested expanding the RRLM to Canada and the U.S. This sentiment, though, could be a worry for some allies of independent labour groups in Mexico, which may see Mexico’s negotiation team hold firm on not expanding or improving commitments to the RRLM if reciprocity of its application is not on the table.

While the labour consultation findings were limited in scope, the Mexican consultation process certainly engaged labour unions more robustly than the Canadian consultation. In addition to the formal consultation, Mexican independent unions, in solidarity with Indigenous, farmer, feminist and other civil society groups, have made clear their own priorities for the CUSMA review. This alternative vision reflects a human rights-centred approach rather than the privileging of corporate voices.

For Indigenous and rural communities in Mexico, the consultation added little value, as the minimal discussion of the integration of these communities was identified as “Beyond the scope of CUSMA.” While the impacts of CUSMA will certainly find their way to Indigenous and rural communities, concern for their collective rights does not seem to be a particularly important issue for Mexico’s engagement with the 2026 review.

This neglect seems to be a pattern for all three countries, from the expansion of extractive projects to more straightforward attacks on Indigenous rights, such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) recent harassment of Indigenous cross-border travellers from Canada. 

The Mexican Secretariat of Economy also detailed some future-oriented points of discussion from the roundtables. Some of these emerging issues include sustainable tourism and climate resilience, labour mobility, the integration of the care and solidarity economy into regional chains, environmental cooperation, traceability and green standards, and digital trade issues. Mexico identified these issues not only as possible drivers of the CUSMA review and future regional negotiations, but also as strategically advantageous for Mexico to lead the construction of trilateral positions and frameworks to address them.

Another interesting reflection on the consultation process is the lack of pointed critique of Canadian policy. Discussion of Canada (independently of the U.S.) in general was absent from the document, while the U.S. was singled out for criticism on numerous occasions. Not just for tariffs, but also for a range of anti-dumping measures against Mexican agricultural products and a lack of compliance with dispute panels.

Mexico’s consultation process proved fruitful, perhaps a natural conclusion given its immense scope, engaging all states and relevant sectors. As the CUSMA review for Mexico and the U.S. is only a few days away, it is clear from the consultation process that Mexico strongly believes the trade agreement is central to its future economic growth plans.

For Mexico, CUSMA is not perceived as a restriction on economic policy; it is a platform that will facilitate increases in the scale, quality, and competitiveness of production oriented toward the North American and third-party markets. To achieve this, Mexico will seek to make “tweaks” to the agreement without jeopardizing the possibility of its fracture.

Close economic integration with the U.S. and Canada is here to stay for President Sheinbaum and her “Team Mexico.” What comes next is dealing with what is undoubtedly going to be a review process full of typical Trump insults and threats to tear up the agreement.

The Mexican government’s summary of key findings from its consultation was similar to the short report Canada issued earlier this year. The parallels, though, diverge strongly when considering the substantive methodological approach of both consultations, with Mexico having a more thorough and engaging consultation.

Going into the CUSMA review, a potential source of optimism for those seeking to maintain the agreement could be the aligned positions of the Canadian and Mexican governments. Notably, both President Sheinbaum and Prime Minister Mark Carney hope to retain the deal, with only minor changes proposed. If they can maintain this alignment as the review progresses, they may be able to jointly resist proposals from the Trump administration that would harm workers or further undermine Canadian and Mexican independence.