The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) has overseen four of the most fruitful years in the history of North American trade. Mexico retained its No. 1 spot on the list of U.S. trading partners in 2024 with $840 billion in two-way commerce—an all-time record—while Canada took second place. The food industries have followed suit; Mexico broke another record by receiving $30.3 billion in food exports from the United States in 2024, and joins Canada among the Top 2 exporters of foodstuff to the United States since the USMCA first took effect in 2020.
Despite these successes, change is on the horizon. The agreement’s built-in joint-review clause mandates that all three nations convene in July 2026 to terminate, amend, or confirm the agreement for another 16 years. And while termination is highly unlikely, amendments will all but certainly be proposed. The three governments have already started preparatory consultations to alleviate the economic toll that prolonged negotiations could take. So what are they discussing, and what will it mean for food supply chains?
It is impossible to foresee the answer to that question, of course, but industry experts have weighed in on the various changes that could rectify former oversights, accommodate new challenges, and deepen North American trade relations to the benefit of all three nations. Below are four of the most significant areas for improvement and how addressing each one could benefit food supply chains in the years to come.
1. Cooperating on infrastructure
Mexico boasts a substantial, low-cost labor market which draws investment from all corners of the globe, and yet—in spite of considerable progress—it lacks the domestic infrastructure to realize the full potential of that workforce. The United States and Canada are facing high employment costs and labor shortages in the meantime, yet have the resources to address the infrastructural bottlenecks of their southern neighbor.
The natural solution is for all three nations to initiate a collective fund or technical assistance mechanism that backs infrastructural projects which benefit North America as a whole. Trilateral investment to improve bridges, rails, and ports of entry can lower logistical costs by as much as $12 billion while allowing all three nations to curtail their respective limiting factors. The expansion and modernization of border crossings would be particularly advantageous for the cold-chain, with distributors of perishable goods often losing hours of shelf-life idling at the border during peak traffic.
2. Streamlining customs
Bureaucracy remains a significant cause of unnecessary overhead throughout the North American trade bloc. Inconsistent customs protocols, cumbersome paperwork, and multiple certification offices make it difficult for businesses to file, gather, and present the documentation they need to move across borders, while inspection and product-tracking systems remain fragmented.
Although the USMCA already encourages the use of electronic documents and a single-window approach to customs, fully digitized certificates of origin and real-time cargo tracking are yet to be implemented. Such an effort could significantly simplify and expedite the customs process. In high-risk food sectors like dairy, meats, and leafy greens, digital documentation would mean better traceability and a lower likelihood of compliance disputes.
3. Coordinating regulations
More pressing—if more complex—than inspection and documentation is the need for increased regulatory alignment. A shipment of foodstuffs may be subject to different labeling rules, pesticide limits, sourcing requirements, or refrigeration protocols depending on where it is and where it came from. Such a patchwork of regulations and safety standards makes compliance costly and complicated for cross-border commerce.
The Brookings Institution suggests that the USMCA review committee should work to reconcile divergent regulations in key fields such as these. They can then establish a system of mutual recognition that will allow certifications and inspections in, say, the United Sates to be sufficient in both Canada and Mexico. Businesses would only need to concern themselves with domestic certifications while all parties would benefit from unambiguous, universal safety standards.
4. Strengthening supply chain resilience
A barrage of disruptions—from COVID-19 and the Suez Canal incident to warfare and natural disasters—have rocked the globe’s highly interdependent, intercontinental supply chains in the five years since the USMCA first took effect. Measures to make the North American trade bloc more resilient and independent should be a major point of discussion throughout the review, according to the Wilson Center.
Food is unsurprisingly one of the most vital sectors for the overall security of the continent. It is also one of the most susceptible to losses in the case of disruption; at the height of the pandemic, for instance, 14 million liters of milk were dumped each day due to logistics interruptions in the United States. The USMCA review could identify supply-chain pinch-points throughout the continent for critical resources, from semiconductors to corn, and implement contingency plans to help share the impact of future shortages. Long-term incentives for local food production could also be set in motion to make North America more self-sufficient in the near future.
Conclusion
A focused, productive review of the USMCA could translate five record-breaking years into a substantially deeper and more resilient North American partnership. Capitalizing on the opportunities discussed above to modernize, simplify, and strengthen logistics networks throughout the world’s biggest trading bloc would spur commerce and collaboration—in the food sector and beyond—for decades to come.
