New North America Insights

March 2026

This student-driven news brief shares critical policy insights on international trade across North America.

Perils of the friendzone: Argentina window to CUSMA

Argentina and the U.S. concluded a trade agreement that provides important signals for what Canada can expect in the upcoming CUSMA review. Argentina, like Canada, has not faced high Liberation Day tariffs. Instead, Argentina had a 10 per cent tariff, which the new agreement locks in place for all but 1,000 products. Argentina also received promises for a review of steel and aluminum tariffs, but no explicit commitments on current or future Section 232 tariffs.

Most strikingly, Argentina agreed to align with U.S. national security policy on trade with third parties, essentially subordinating Argentine trade security concerns to the U.S. Article 4.1 of the agreement states: "If the United States adopts a border measure or other trade action and considers that such measure is relevant to protecting the economic or national security of the United States, Argentina, when appropriate, shall adopt a measure with similar effect to the measure adopted by the United States.”

This mirrors language in other recent U.S. trade agreements. What is most striking is that this occurs in a country with which Argentina has enjoyed among the most positive relations with the Trump administration and President Trump personally, including a USD $20 billion government investment timed on the eve of a critical election for the Argentine president. None of this seems to have led to more favourable terms for Argentina than the U.S. has offered in other recent deals.

Bottom line, this is yet another indication that there will be no zero-tariff deals from the Trump administration.

First Nations invoke 1794 border treaty Tariffs

With the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) set to rule on the legality of President Trump’s Fentanyl and Liberation Day tariffs, an interesting side note to the ruling involves border tribes. In April, members of the Aamskapi Pikuni Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Montana filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump administration tariffs violated the 1794 Jay Treaty, which exempted tribes along the U.S.-Canada border from tariffs on goods traded between the nations. The lawsuit asked the court to halt the tariffs affecting Canada, or, alternatively, to declare the emergency orders that implemented the tariffs void for tribal members because they violate the 1794 treaty. In September, while the case was awaiting a decision from the federal court in Montana, the group bringing the suit petitioned the Supreme Court to join the broader case against the administration’s International Emergency Powers Act tariffs.

In October, SCOTUS rejected the Blackfeet request without comment - “The motion of Susan Webber, et al. for leave to intervene is denied,” is the entirety of the decision.

This issue is still live, and it is only a matter of time until the issue gets a hearing in the U.S. with the Court of International Trade, which first heard the IEEPA tariff case, likely to have jurisdiction. Of note, there are seven nations or confederacies along the U.S.-Canada border.

Analysis of "other" U.S. trade agreements shows potential CUSMA futures

A new analysis by Inu Manak of the Council on Foreign Relations (and contributor to work at the New North America Initiative) lists the contents of the emerging, fuller texts of trade deals under the second Trump administration. Of the 18 announced deals, including the Argentine deal mentioned above, only five have become final agreements; 12 are frameworks with ongoing negotiations: the UK, Indonesia, Japan, the EU, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Ecuador, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Taiwan, and Bangladesh; and one, India, is an even more nascent interim framework.

All the agreements and frameworks include text on non-tariff barriers, digital trade and economic security. Interestingly, U.S. Section 232 tariffs are only addressed in six. Our analysis of the Section 232 provisions indicates that none align with Canada's negotiated side letter to the current CUSMA agreement.

In early 2026, three downtown Las Vegas casinos launched an “At Par” program that allows Canadians to use Canadian currency at a one-to-one exchange rate. The 37 per cent exchange-rate hit may partially explain the 20 per cent drop in Canadian visitors, Las Vegas’ largest international market.

Meanwhile, the Florida governor has dismissed concerns about the decline in Canadian visitors, and we find no Florida equivalent to what Las Vegas is doing. This may prove to be a real-time experiment on what’s keeping Canadians out of the U.S. In any event, it suggests an easy counter-marketing pitch to attract American tourists north of the border.

For more on the decline in Canadian travel to the U.S.:

‘Las Vegas misses Canada’: Downtown casinos launch currency exchange deal - Las Vegas Review-Journal
Downtown Las Vegas hotels create promotion to entice Canadians - Travel Weekly by NORTHSTAR
DeSantis mocks '3.3 million' Canadians who visited Florida: 'Not much of a boycott' - Yahoo!News
Screened passenger traffic in Canadian airports (Statistics for Jan. 2026) - Government of Canada

British Columbia and Washington State have agreed to establish a new interparliamentary working group to coordinate on shared cross-border issues, including border community challenges, environmental policy and economic cooperation, with the first annual meeting planned for Washington later in 2026. The move builds on long-standing private-sector cooperation under the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, which links British Columbia, Washington and Oregon through regular subnational engagement on trade, technology, and infrastructure.

Similar dynamics exist in other highly integrated regions, such as the Great Lakes area spanning Ontario, Quebec and several U.S. states, and the Atlantic-New England region, where historic ties support sustained cross-border subnational government engagement even when federal trade politics are unsettled. Western Canada outside British Columbia lacks many of these structural advantages. Distance, limited transport connectivity and fewer standing regional forums make consistent engagement harder. As CUSMA uncertainty rises, geography becomes policy. Cascadia demonstrates what embedded integration looks like and what remains underdeveloped elsewhere.

A key U.S. constituency is already making the case that uncertainty is not a negotiating tool. It is a cost. More than 40 U.S. farm and agricultural organizations have formed the Agricultural Coalition for USMCA, urging Washington to support continuity under CUSMA ahead of its 2026 review. The new coalition is a collection of heavy hitters among U.S. agricultural producers, processors and associations, including allies like the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and surprising additions such as the dairy and poultry groups.

The coalition's message uses a Trump-centric lens, congratulating the President’s historic achievements with the current agreement and its safeguarding of U.S. agriculture. Given USDA predictions for a decline in U.S. ag exports this year, the push to keep the CUSMA agreement has additional impetus.

For Canadian producers and agri-businesses, we have allies.

Alberta–Montana electricity trade frictions made headlines following comments from the USTR that this issue should be on the CUSMA review agenda. This left many in Alberta wondering what this is about. In short, Alberta operates a competitive, privately run but provincially regulated electricity market that has rapidly expanded generation while taking coal-fired plants offline. Increased production in Alberta means less demand for electricity from out-of-province. In addition, neighbouring jurisdictions to the south experience similar fluctuations in wind and solar, making the systems incompatible; if the wind is blowing in southern Alberta, it’s likely blowing in northern Montana.

Alberta representatives have voiced frustration that Montana officials meet with the USTR but have not met with them to discuss the issue. Something we encountered as well. A reminder that, as important as sub-national, neighbour-to-neighbour relations may be, they are not always in sync.

Canada’s lumber sector has been hit even harder by the addition of Section 232 national security tariffs to the list of irritants in the U.S.-Canada lumber trade. Carney’s forestry aid package may offer some help. Rather than assuming policy stability or good-faith negotiation, the measures acknowledge that stability, not settlement, is the objective.

Aid measures target a severe cash-flow problem created by persistent U.S. duties. The new financing provides liquidity to keep mills operating, retain workers and restructure where necessary rather than making irreversible cuts under pressure. The inclusion of no-cost repayment extensions matters. It recognizes that tariff shocks are policy-driven, not the result of poor management, and that repayment timelines must reflect trade uncertainty rather than normal business cycles. Provinces are now beginning to pair federal support with their own adjustment measures.

This is not a bailout; it is a bridge. It buys time, preserves capacity and keeps options open while negotiations continue. And it may be a model for other adaptation measures.

As noted by most major U.S. media outlets, including the NY Times, record-low snowfall this winter has left the western U.S. facing the likely prospect of severe drought and associated political pressures once again this summer. How the U.S. is addressing water issues with Mexico is something Canadians will want to monitor, given the still-unsigned Columbia River treaty and President Trump’s, before returning to the White House, description of the Columbia River as a faucet for California.

In this regard, Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz (R-Tex) alleges that Mexico has provided insufficient water deliveries as required by the 1944 U.S.-Mexico water treaty and in a letter to the USTR, and is calling for the management of cross-border water issues to be moved from the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) into the USMCA agreement. Unsurprisingly, the letter was republished by the U.S. Citrus Industry. And, of course, now President Trump has weighed in, threatening a 5% tariff in retaliation for the shortage.

As Mexico Affairs notes, the issue is more complex than a simple one-year missed target. The lack of an effective enforcement mechanism under the bilateral treaty has been a simmering issue along the southern border and explains the push for incorporating the treaty obligations into the North American trade agreement.

The flip side of conversations about diversifying exports has been an increase in internal trade, or trade between provinces. “Unfortunately, for steel, shipping Canadian from east to west isn’t cost-effective — it’s simply too heavy to move cheaply by rail. Shipping rebar, a key building ingredient from Asia to B.C. by sea costs $39 to $69 per metric tonne vs. $200 per tonne by rail from Ontario or Quebec. Western Canada produces very little steel (BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba together export about $2.1 billion in steel to the United States annually, compared with $12.2 billion from Ontario alone); retaliatory tariffs on U.S. and Canadian steel impose a complex, shifting series of barriers and charges on importing various types of steel.

The Hill Times reports that the ‘Steel tariff missteps threaten Canada’s energy future’ and not only will these tariffs bring risk to projects and drive investment away, but they might also just backfire entirely, driving BC to purchase cheaper Asian towers. Mike Martens, the President of the Independent Contractors and Business Association of Alberta, suggests that Canadian steel tariffs and counter tariffs threaten the viability of the “Capital Line South LRT Extension and water and wastewater upgrades."

Skipping the bill

Canada has been removed from attending President Trump’s latest “Board of Peace” meeting, briefly framed as a diplomatic snub. In reality, it may have saved Ottawa money and time. These gatherings generate optics, travel costs and vague communiqués, but not leverage. Canada didn’t lose influence by staying home; it avoided paying $1 billion to sit at a table where decisions weren’t being made anyway.

The greatest test of European loyalty would have been refusing to attend a North American FIFA World Cup...

...where the marquee matches sit in the United States. That was never going to happen. European loyalty does not skip football. It survives sanctions, tariffs and diplomatic outrage every time.

Trump says the U.S. doesn’t need Canadian-made cars

The Detroit Auto Show just disagreed. The North American Car of the Year win by Windsor-built Dodge Charger is a reminder that automotive integration isn’t ideological; it’s operational. Supply chains don’t respond to slogans; they reward efficiency, quality and scale across borders.

Beggar thy neighbour

Prime Minister Carney’s official offer to host the 2029 APEC meeting in Canada was intended to signal to Asia Canada's seriousness about its return to Asia and to add weight to its Indo-Pacific Strategy. The only problem is that Mexico has already confirmed as the host of the 2028 APEC meeting. APEC summits rotate among the 21 member economies and between Asia and the Americas. Having sequential summits in neighbouring countries would be a stretch; having sequential summits on this side of the Pacific would be even more of a stretch.

This brief is part of the New North America Initiative’s mandate to help train the next generation of North Americanists through experiential learning. In the first year of the Initiative, we are testing new ideas and products to do this.

Next up is an up-to-the-minute analysis of what Trump’s other trade agreements mean for the CUSMA review. To see what else is being done, click here.