U.S. senators meet with Carney, push to ‘reinvigorate' CUSMA ahead of Trump deadline
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U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a blanket tariff of 35 per cent starting next month on Canadian goods entering his country, barring him and Carney coming up with a new economic and security agreement before that date.
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Carney met on Parliament Hill first thing in the morning with Democratic senators Rob Wyden from Oregon, Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada, as well as Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, to discuss Canada's ongoing trade war with the U.S.
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Murkowski is one of the only Republican senators who has been openly critical of the Trump administration.
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Speaking after the meeting, Wyden said the first step to bring stability to the Canada-U.S. economic relationship is to try to 'reinvigorate' CUSMA — known as USMCA on the U.S. side — and said the other visiting senators share his view.
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'This is something that we've had a considerable amount of success with since it was written during the (first) Trump administration, and we ought to strengthen it. We ought to build it, not get rid of it,' Wyden said.
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CUSMA is scheduled for review in 2026. Over the weekend, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he expects Trump will want to renegotiate the existing agreement next year.
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'It makes perfect sense for the president to renegotiate it,' Lutnick told CBS News in an interview that aired on Sunday. 'He wants to protect American jobs. He doesn't want cars built in Canada or Mexico when they could be built in Michigan and Ohio.'
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Wyden did not specify what he meant exactly by reinvigorating the existing trade deal, or if it meant in his view an early review or renegotiation ahead of next year's deadline.
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'At the end of the day, you are our best friends, and the relationship is going through some great strain,' said Hassan, whose state, New Hampshire, has long been a tourist destination for Canadians.
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'But we do think that the framework of the USMCA gives us an opportunity to, kind of in one framework, come together and improve on something that was a great bipartisan success back in 2018,' she added.
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