Trump Trade Rep Says Priority Is Re-shoring US Manufacturing Through Tariffs as USMCA Review Looms

 

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer speaks during a joint media conference during the EU Trade Ministers meeting at the European Council building in Brussels on Nov. 24, 2025. AP Photo/Omar Havana

A senior trade official from the Trump administration says Canada is unlikely to avoid tariffs as the United States pushes to rebuild its industrial base, even as both countries prepare to review their free trade agreement later this year.

U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there could be discussions with Canada if it agrees to participate in the re-shoring efforts the U.S. administration is pursuing.

Greer made the comments to CBC News on Feb. 24 on the sidelines of U.S. President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C.

Trump touted his tariff agenda during the speech, saying it has made the country stronger economically as well as more secure, and expressed disappointment in the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down his use of emergency legislation to impose broad tariffs.

The court’s decision last week had limited economic impact on Canada because goods covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal are already exempt from Trump’s 35 percent tariff. The president used a separate authority to impose a new broad tariff of 10 percent on trading partners, but the USMCA exemption remains.

The other U.S. tariffs imposed by Trump on national security grounds, which were not being reviewed by the top court, have had a more severe impact on Canada. The steel, aluminum, and automotive sectors, which are closely linked with the United States, have been hit hard.

Greer said the Canadian side has expressed an interest in having “some kind of alternative deal right now,” while adding that the Trump administration is “quite focused on re-shoring supply chains related to automotive, steel, aluminum.”

The “alternative deal” is a reference to unsuccessful efforts by Ottawa to obtain tariff relief on impacted industries.

Ottawa and Washington had been inching closer to reaching a deal on steel, aluminum, and energy in the fall. The talks were cancelled by Trump after the province of Ontario ran an anti-tariff TV ad in the United States.

Greer said the U.S. tariff plan has helped increase steel production and exports, noting how the United States overtook Japan in production in 2025 for the first time in years. The United States became the third-largest steel producer (82 million tonnes) behind India (164.9 million tonnes), and China (960.8 million tonnes).

“If Canada wants to come in and participate in this type of re-shoring we’re trying to do, we’re happy to have those discussions,” said Greer, who was then asked to clarify what this means.

“If Canada wants to agree that we can have some level of higher tariff on them while they open up their markets to us, in things like dairy and other things, that’s a helpful conversation,” Greer answered, while adding he doesn’t want to negotiate through media.

Different U.S. administrations have identified Canada’s supply management system for dairy and poultry products as a trade irritant, and Trump has specifically criticized high tariffs imposed on U.S. dairy farmers through the tariff-rate quota system.

Meanwhile, Ottawa has pledged to safeguard supply management, with Parliament passing legislation last year to ensure the system is protected in trade agreements.”

The point of contention is likely to be discussed in the upcoming USMCA review slated for July. All sides have been getting ready for the planned review. Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed former Clerk of the Privy Council Janice Charette earlier this month to lead negotiations.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne reacted to Greer’s comments on Feb. 25 when speaking to reporters in Ottawa, saying it’s no longer a surprise that there’s a price to access the U.S. market and that the United States is seeking to re-shore manufacturing.

Champagne noted that Canada in general faces a low average U.S. tariff rate, while at the same time his government is trying to diversify trade “at the speed that we have not done before.”

Re-Shoring Not ‘Fast Enough’

Trump scrapped the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his first term and lauded its replacement with the USMCA, but he has since soured on the deal.

Greer said the initial belief was that USMCA would help restore critical supply chains to the United States, whereas it led to more vehicles being produced in Mexico.

“There’s a lot of good in the deal, but there are a lot of things where re-shoring didn’t happen fast enough,” he said.

The senior trade official said USMCA needs to be reinforced to have stricter rules to guarantee more U.S. content in produced goods, and to prevent other countries from using Canada and Mexico as transshipment hubs.

“We don’t want a situation where countries like Vietnam or China can send a bunch of stuff to Canada, do a screwdriver operation, and send it across the border to the United States duty free, right?” he said.

“And we know that Canada has talked about having closer ties, economic ties, with China. I don’t want a situation where Canada is being used as a back door for China’s goods.”

Ottawa’s pursuit of closer ties with Beijing was criticized by Trump and his officials following Carney’s trip to China in mid-January. Carney’s deal to drop the 100 percent tariff to 6.1 percent on up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) was also decried.

“Canada is systematically destroying itself. The China deal is a disaster for them. Will go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history,” Trump said on Jan. 25.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a U.S. Senate committee earlier this month that the United States would not drop its tariffs on Canada to zero if Canada did the same, saying Chinese EVs cannot be allowed to come across the northern border.

Canada had slapped 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs in late 2024, following in the footsteps of the United States. China retaliated against Canada in March 2025. China has since agreed to remove or reduce tariffs on some Canadian agricultural and seafood products in exchange for allowing Chinese EVs into Canada.

USMCA Review

Greer will play a central role in the USMCA review and he has previously floated the idea that the trade deal could be scrapped and replaced by bilateral agreements.

These comments had been met with skepticism by the Canadian side. Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said this is not what he’s hearing from discussions with the Trump administration.

Nonetheless, Ottawa has pursued closer ties with Mexico, and LeBlanc led a large trade mission to the country last week.

LeBlanc met with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and said there’s alignment with the Mexican side on wanting to review the USMCA and not renegotiate it.

“One country has some particular issues with Mexico and Canada. We can work through those, we believe, and preserve the important trilateral framework,” LeBlanc told the Canadian Senate on Feb. 24.

LeBlanc also said he views the fact that Washington has kept the USMCA exemption on Trump’s new tariffs as a sign U.S. officials “see value in the agreement.”

Editor’s note: the article was updated with comment from Finance Minister Champagne.

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