Experts: Congress to Influence USMCA Review, but Trump Could Quit Pact

However, USMCA still allows any country to quit with six months' notice -- and there is no language in either the pact or the implementing rule that gives Congress a say on whether that termination takes place.

During a panel discussion this week convened by the Washington International Trade Association, Greta Peisch, who was general counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Biden administration, made that point.

As part of the official sunset review, there are rules for what information the USTR must solicit from stakeholders and the public, and how he should share those findings, the administration's position on renewal, and what issues it will raise at the trilateral review.

Peisch said that there are no consequences if the administration chooses not to follow the procedure laid out in the law.

"And you know, like any consultation process, it's really just an opportunity to be heard. It's not an opportunity or requirement to take into account or act on the views of Congress," she said.

However, she added that she believes Congress will "likely influence where the review process will go."

Although the trilateral review is more than eight months away, that report to Congress is at the beginning of January 2026.

Patrick Childress, who was a high-level career attorney in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative before joining Holland & Knight, said the winter "is going to be very pivotal in terms of congressional engagement on USMCA."

Peisch said that even without the ability to stop the termination of USMCA, Congress does have leverage -- for instance, Congress could roll back the migration and fentanyl tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which are 25% and 35%, respectively, for goods that aren't covered by Section 232 actions and don't meet USMCA rules of origin.

"I think that those levers are unlikely to be utilized," she said.

Peisch said there's a deeper question she has, which is: Will the negotiations be more like the first Trump term, where Canada and Mexico were negotiating under an implied threat of termination, but there was still give and take? Or will it be more like the reciprocal tariff deals, where the U.S. demands concessions and offers none of its own?

Before the debate heads officially to Congress, businesses, unions and activists can give their input, either written, or at a public hearing.

Thea Lee, who spent 20 years at the AFL-CIO, and who was President Joe Biden's Labor Department's Bureau of International Labor Affairs director, said that unions have "a lot of frustrations" about how much Mexican labor reforms, wage provisions in auto rules of origin and the rapid response mechanism changed the calculus of outsourcing to Mexico.

"It's important to recognize some of the criticism that will come is like: 'Hey, but we're still losing jobs to Mexico, and we didn't close the wage gap between the United States and Mexico.' I would argue that it maybe wasn't realistic to think that four or five years of implementation of a labor chapter in a trade agreement would change that dynamic in the short run," she said during the panel.

Lee said that even with unions' complaints, they do see the Rapid Response Mechanism as valuable, and wouldn't want the treaty to end and thereby lose it.

The panelists agreed that rules of origin will be a major focus for the U.S. as it tries to change USMCA to drive U.S. manufacturing growth.

Peisch said it won't just be in autos, where the lion's share of attention was in the NAFTA rewrite.

"And I think it connects to this thinking about China and other third-party content, with the idea of having more of the benefits of the agreement devolve to the member countries and also to the United States."

Childress said there may be players pushing for simpler auto rules.

"I think anyone who spent much time with the USMCA autos rules of origin knows that they are extremely complicated. And that's probably putting it lightly," he said.

Lee said she tends to agree "that some change needs to be made. Even the labor value content, you know, this in principle, the $16 minimum wage. I don't really think that worked as intended or as desired by labor folks."

She said that the rules of origin are "ridiculously complicated, and really, the companies are playing around to comply but without really moving a lot of production."

Moderator Sarah Stewart said she wonders if there is enough transparency in supply chains to be able to evaluate how much non-North American content is in goods outside the auto sector, or North American, but made by Chinese companies, content. "Do we have the mechanisms in place to be able to evaluate that?"