Fourth round of USMCA talks between US and Mexico postponed due to Xi Jinping’s DC visit

The fourth round of negotiations between the United States and Mexico on the USMCA trade agreement will have to wait. The crucial meeting between the neighboring countries, scheduled for early next week, has been postponed with no new date on the horizon. Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez, Undersecretary for Foreign Trade at the Secretariat of Economy, acknowledged on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump has prioritized the visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which begins Thursday in Washington, as well as to the G20 trade ministers’ meeting, an event organized by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. “We agreed with the United States that in the coming weeks we will announce when the fourth round will take place,” the Mexican official said.

According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the Trump administration cited “logistical reasons” for canceling the fourth round of talks. This is not the first date change for this key meeting. At first, Mexican authorities said the meeting would take place in the first half of September. It was then moved to the end of the month and now there is not even a tentative date.

The binational working groups have not been free of turbulence because agendas for trade and security issues have clashed. On the trade front, one of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s priorities is to reduce the Section 232 tariffs. For steel, the aim is to lower tariffs from 50% to 25%, while on automobiles a reduction from 25% to 15% has been put on the table. Separately, the Trump team has asked its Mexican counterpart to raise the bar on cybersecurity, particularly regarding investments coming from Asia, notably China.

With this cancellation, discussions on the future of the USMCA, new rules of origin, cybersecurity, and cuts to sectoral tariffs that weigh on Mexico—on autos, steel, aluminum and other raw materials—will be left in limbo. A few days before the cancellation was announced, Greer told Bloomberg that Mexico has maintained a “pragmatic” stance and has made “many changes” to move the trade agreement talks forward. The Trump administration is seeking to reach an agreement with the Latin American country ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November.

In mid-September, Trump and Sheinbaum had a phone call to discuss North America’s commercial future. Although few details were released, Mexico’s president said that the working groups in Washington were progressing well. “The possibility of an agreement is moving forward well and the call was very good. We reached some agreements, but until the final agreement is in place we cannot disclose it,” the president said at her regular morning press conference.

Although the United States is keeping up the pressure on the USMCA, the Sheinbaum administration has repeatedly defended the relevance of the trade pact. For Mexico, the USMCA has served as a partial shield against Trump’s tariff war. According to government figures, more than 85% of Mexican shipments have avoided these tariffs because they meet the trade agreement’s requirements.

In the first seven months of the year, Mexican exports to the other side of the Rio Grande reached a record of more than $358.7 billion, an increase of 16% compared with the same period a year earlier, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Despite this close trade relationship and Mexico’s interest in gaining more guarantees, the long-awaited progress is, for now, on hold.

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