Trump Admin Refuses to Share Plans on Review of USMCA
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Trump administration provided a closed-door, oral report on its plans for the 2026 review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the Senate Finance Committee, following a similar meeting yesterday with the House Ways and Means Committee. The administration has indicated it will not be submitting the statutorily required report to Congress, despite congressional leaders’ insistence that details be shared in writing and made public.
In response, Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement:
“The Trump administration is once again ignoring Congress’ legitimate role in governing this country and keeping the American people in the dark about important economic policies that affect their daily lives.
“Trump doesn’t want to draw attention to the USMCA because he failed to fix the hemorrhaging of U.S. jobs fueled by NAFTA’s race to the bottom. The American people deserve to know what exactly the administration plans to do with this review: whether they plan to do anything to fix the ongoing damage or instead insert more corporate giveaways, like they’ve done for Big Tech.
“It’s becoming a pattern for this administration to ignore legally required reports on its chaotic trade agenda – perhaps because decisions around tariffs are made by late-night tweets rather than careful policy research. The executive order that initiated Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” required the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to submit a report to the President with recommendations on which countries to tariff and how much. That report (if it exists) was never released, and a FOIA request for it has gone unanswered.”