CUSMA: Trade Czar Eyes Canada ‘Options’ by Year-End
The future of North American trade got a little clearer — and no less complicated — this week. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said he hopes to hand President Trump, Canada and Mexico a set of “options” by the end of the year on renewing CUSMA, the continental trade pact that underpins hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border commerce, including Canada’s forest-products exports.
CUSMA ‘Options’ Promised by Year-End
Testifying at a U.S. Senate finance hearing, Greer laid out an ambitious near-term timeline. He said he would like to reach at least preliminary arrangements with each of America’s continental partners before the calendar turns, framing the coming months as a window to make tangible progress rather than let the review drift.
“I would love to have between now and the end of the year at least some arrangements — one with Canada, one with Mexico.”
— Jamieson Greer, U.S. Trade Representative, Global News
For Canadian exporters who have watched the trade relationship sour, the comment offered a rare note of forward motion — a signal that Washington is at least thinking about a negotiated path, even as it wields other, blunter instruments. It is a marked shift in tone from the optimism of earlier years, when premiers headed to Washington to celebrate CUSMA as a hard-won win.
The Rolling Review That Could Last a Decade
The urgency stems from a decision Greer announced at the start of July: the United States would not renew CUSMA outright. That choice triggered the pact’s built-in mechanism of annual rolling reviews — a process that can continue for up to a decade, after which the agreement would expire unless all three countries agree to extend it.
That structure turns what might have been a single make-or-break negotiation into a slow, recurring test of the relationship. Each annual review becomes a pressure point, and the “options” Greer wants to deliver are essentially the menu of ways the three countries might keep the deal alive rather than let it wind down. For businesses, the open-ended nature of the process is itself a source of strain, layering uncertainty on top of every cross-border investment and supply decision.
Rules of Origin on a Slower Track
Not everything is on the fast track. Greer was candid that some of the thorniest issues — notably rules of origin, along with labour and environment provisions — will take more time, requiring further discussion, including with Congress, into the following year. Rules of origin, which determine how much of a product must be made within North America to qualify for tariff-free treatment, are among the most consequential and contested elements of the pact.
That split timeline matters. It suggests any year-end “arrangements” would address the more tractable questions first, while the structural issues that most affect manufacturers and integrated supply chains get pushed into 2027. For the forest-products sector, where components and finished goods can cross the border multiple times, the eventual shape of those rules can be as important as headline tariff rates — a dynamic already visible in how 2026 tariffs are reshaping the wood products market.
CUSMA has always sat awkwardly alongside the forest sector’s biggest trade irritant. Softwood lumber, the perennial flashpoint between the two countries, was never resolved within the agreement and continues to be governed by a separate regime of U.S. duties. That means the CUSMA review runs on a parallel track to a lumber dispute that predates it by decades, and Canadian producers must watch both at once. A CUSMA framework that preserved tariff-free treatment for value-added wood products would offer some stability; one that tightened rules of origin or unravelled could add a fresh layer of cost on top of existing softwood duties. For an industry already absorbing trade shocks, the difference between those outcomes is measured in jobs and mills.
Tariffs, Uncertainty and the Forest-Sector Stakes
The diplomatic overture does not exist in a vacuum. Greer’s remarks came just days after Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs on an array of Canadian goods within 30 days, and he faced sharp questioning from lawmakers over duties that, on some items, would leave Canada facing higher rates than China. The result is a jarring split screen: talk of negotiated “options” on one side, escalating tariff threats on the other.
For Canada’s forest industry, already navigating escalating U.S. duties on softwood lumber, that combination breeds precisely the uncertainty that freezes investment and complicates planning. A year-end deadline for “options” gives the sector something to watch, but with rules of origin deferred and tariffs looming, Canadian producers will be weighing hopeful words against hard duties for months to come. Until those options actually reach the table, the safest planning assumption for the industry is continued volatility rather than resolution.
