USMCA is a Home Run!

By Lesly McNitt

I grew up in a baseball family and Yogi Berra’s classic sayings were quoted in our household often. The Yogi-ism that keeps coming to mind lately is, “it’s deja vu all over again.”  I’ll tell you why. When I first joined the National Corn Growers Association in 2017, I handled the trade portfolio. At the time, we were on the verge of losing the North American Free Trade Agreement, which had locked in Mexico and Canada as critical trading partners for the U.S. corn industry. NCGA helped lead the agriculture community, advocating that the Trump (45) administration and Congress secure and ratify a stronger replacement agreement, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, notably with bipartisan support.

Agriculture had taken North American trade for granted once, and we vowed not to do it again. By all accounts, USMCA has been a vast improvement over the original NAFTA, while still delivering even more for agriculture. But I fear we are just waking up to the fact that USMCA is not guaranteed and a potentially big threat for farmers lingers just over the horizon. In this farm economy especially, Mexico and Canada are not markets that we can afford to lose.

NCGA is mobilizing the ag community to ensure this doesn’t happen, and we are going to need your help.

USMCA is Important to Growers

Passed in 2018 and signed in 2020, USMCA has significantly increased U.S. agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico, provided more certainty between the three nations and established a better mechanism for resolving trade disputes, like one that arose over genetically modified corn exports to Mexico. In fact, thanks to the agreement, Mexico is reliably the U.S.’s top corn export market, and Canada is the top purchaser of ethanol, and these opportunities continue to grow. When the USMCA was negotiated, Mexico accounted for about 25% of U.S. corn exports – in 2025 it was 40%.

The Threat

Yet, despite USMCA’s positive impact on the farm and U.S. global competitiveness, the president has cast doubts on his commitment to renewing the agreement. Without a speedy renewal, farmers are faced with uncertainty at a time when they greatly depend on the stability of the foundational markets of Mexico and Canada.