Seven major automotive trade associations have written to the US Trade Representative, calling for an extension of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) rather than a break-up into separate bilateral arrangements.
In a letter to the US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, as reported by Reuters, the organisations said maintaining the agreement was critical to preserving integrated North American supply chains.
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The groups, representing automakers, car dealers and parts suppliers including General Motors, Volkswagen, Tesla, Toyota and Hyundai, said extending USMCA “will help ensure that the US remains a globally competitive production base at a time of rapid technological change and intensifying international competition”.
The letter comes before the 1 July deadline for a six-year review of the agreement.
The US and Mexico are set to begin formal bilateral negotiations during the week of 25 May in Mexico City.
The industry bodies warned that dividing USMCA into separate agreements “would introduce unnecessary complexity, increase administrative burden, create divergent regulatory regimes, and undermine the very supply chains the agreement was designed to strengthen”.
The appeal follows US President Donald Trump imposing a 25% tariff on global automotive imports in 2025 under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
The measure ended more than 30 years of tariff-free automotive trade under USMCA and its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump has since agreed tariffs of 15% on automotive imports from Japan, the European Union and South Korea, and 10% from the UK.
In some cases, that has made importing vehicles from those markets cheaper than from Mexico.
USMCA requires about 75% of a vehicle’s value to originate within North America, alongside specified content requirements from the US or Canada.
A trade group representing Detroit’s three largest automakers has previously said the agreement generates efficiency savings worth tens of billions of dollars annually.
