Mexican President Says Canada Supports Trilateral FTA Continuing

As the leaders of some Canadian provinces have said their country should cut its own deal with the incoming Trump administration because Mexico hasn't aligned with the U.S. to keep Chinese electric vehicles out of its market, the new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters that it's nothing to worry about.

Sheinbaum noted that the NAFTA rewrite is President-elect Donald Trump's deal, and that Mexico will be prepared with statistics and facts to show how it benefits the U.S., not just Mexico.

She told reporters on Nov. 21 that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn't agree with premiers of Canadian provinces who have said Canada should negotiate its own bilateral deal with the U.S. Sheinbaum spoke to Trudeau on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a Conservative politician and chief executive of the province where most Canadian automaking happens, said on X recently, "I issued a statement on the need for free trade to be fair trade. Mexico has allowed itself to become a back door for Chinese products, threatening Canadian and American jobs. If they won’t match our tariffs, they shouldn’t have a seat at the table. It’s time for a bilateral U.S.-Canada trade deal that puts our workers first."

National opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who is considered to be in a good position in elections later this year, criticized Trudeau for not matching President Joe Biden's tariff hikes on Chinese EVs and EV batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and critical minerals, saying the prime minister "has failed to protect our workers." Not long after that, Canada announced it would match these restrictions. However, Poilievre has not said that Canada's alignment on China overcapacity means it and the U.S. should remove Mexico from CUSMA, as the USMCA is known in Canada.

Sheinbaum also told reporters that Trudeau asked her about "a Chinese-made vehicle brand, that if there was a plant in Mexico, it is an electric vehicle brand. And I told him: The only plant of that brand in North America is in Pasadena, California, that is, it is in the United States." BYD makes electric buses, cargo trucks and garbage trucks in California.

Sheinbaum said that Mexico, for its own interests, is working on decreasing its dependency on Chinese imports, just as it's trying to boost self-sufficiency in grains. (Mexico's desire to move away from genetically modified corn is the subject of a U.S. dispute under the USMCA).

"We agreed to continue talking," she said, adding, "but he clearly told me that he does not agree with what some of the political actors in Canada have expressed."