Trump undermining their sovereignty, Canada and Mexico look to forge united front

Mexico and Canada are looking at ways to team up against their neighbour US, which began the relentless trade war by pushing the two countries to the battlefield.

Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand, and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne visited Mexico earlier this month to meet President Claudia Sheinbaum and make preparations for an upcoming visit by Prime Minister Mark Carney to the country for talks.

“It’s very much an all-hands-on-deck approach to ensure that we are kick-starting,” Anand told reporters, while Champagne added, “It sends a very strong signal when you have the foreign minister of a country and the finance minister come.”

Canada faces 35 per cent tariffs at a time when US President Donald Trump offered Mexico a 90-day extension to trade negotiations. Both countries are wary of Trump’s future actions and do not want to rely on his unpredictability.

Lack of trust

Canada and Mexico, however, have not shared pleasant ties in the past. Their relationship has seen many ups and downs, with the two countries going back and forth in terms of economic and cultural alliance.

In much of Ontario, Mexican factories are often seen as taking away Canadian jobs. As auto industry investments have increasingly shifted toward Mexico and the southern United States over the years, vehicle production in Canada has sharply declined, dropping to 1.3 million units last year, down from a peak of 2.9 million vehicles 25 years ago.

Antonio Ortiz Mena, a professor at Georgetown University, told New York Times, “This ménage à trois was made out of convenience, not love. Both countries, Canada and Mexico, have privileged the relationship with the giant in the middle rather than the relationship between us.”

Following Trump’s reelection as the president, many Canadians also suggested that it was time to leave Mexico behind and focus on a one-on-one trade deal with the US. However, this plan was dropped after Carney became the prime minister.

How can Canada and Mexico go past their differences?

Even if Mexico and Canada find common ground on preserving the trade deal, carefully avoiding any appearance of teaming up against the United States, there remains the risk that Donald Trump could simply refuse to uphold the agreement, warns Carlo Dade, a director at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, according to NYT.

The more reliable strategy, he suggests, may be to rally influential political and economic stakeholders within the US, convincing them that maintaining regional trade stability aligns with their own interests.

Jorge Schiavon, vice president of the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs, said, “The only thing that can contain Trump is America’s own powerful domestic actors; it’s the governors, it’s the big businessmen, it’s the party leaders.”

“They are selfish allies, but they are those who defended the renegotiation in 2018, and they would do it again in 2025,” he added.