The United States declined to renew its trade agreement with Canada and Mexico at the pact's six-year review on Wednesday, leaving the deal in force but stripped of the long extension its partners wanted and pushed into a decade of annual renegotiation.

'The United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form. As a result, the USMCA is not renewed,' the US Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, said in a statement after a trilateral meeting of the three countries' trade commission. The agreement, he added, 'remains in force pending resolution of these issues or until the Agreement's termination.'

The distinction matters. The United States has not withdrawn from or cancelled the deal, which entered force on July 1, 2020. What it refused was the clean 16-year extension the review could have delivered. Instead the agreement now runs through a cycle of annual joint reviews and is set to expire in 2036 unless all three governments later agree to renew it. The US and Mexico are due to meet the week of July 20 for a further round of bilateral talks.

President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he was 'not looking to renew it.' Canada and Mexico had both sought the full extension. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government preferred 'the status quo over a bad deal,' and Mexico, through Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, pressed for the pact to remain a three-way arrangement rather than splitting into separate bilateral tracks.

The stakes are large. Trade within North America passed US$1.6 trillion in 2024, according to Reuters, up from about US$1 trillion when the agreement took effect, spanning the car, agriculture and energy supply chains that set benchmarks well beyond the continent.

For Australia, the value is in the signal. An administration willing to leave even a deal it negotiated and signed on annual review terms is one that treats trade commitments as short-term and reopenable. Canberra already carries its own exposure: Australian goods have faced an across-the-board 10 per cent US tariff imposed in 2026, and a US investigation into forced labour that names Australia, reported by Al Jazeera in late June, is due to conclude this month.

The agreement stays in force for now. The next markers are the US-Mexico talks the week of July 20 and the annual reviews that now define a pact once meant to run untouched for more than a decade.