Trade & Customs Oct 11, 2026 · 7 min read

Trump floats a Mexico-only deal as the USMCA clock runs

Trump says Mexico gets a new deal and Canada is not needed. At a rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, on Saturday 10 October, President Trump said the US would make a new trade deal with Mexico and did not need Canada, The Rio Times reported. He gave no date, content or legal form. Our view: treat this as a signal, not a deal. North American trade is splitting into two lanes. Mexico freight is growing fast: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data put July US–Mexico trade at $94.8 billion, up 27.5%. Canada faces threatened 50% tariffs on autos, parts and steel from 1 January 2027. Our call: no signed US–Mexico deal text before 12 January 2027.

North America is becoming two trade lanes, and forwarders should plan for both On Saturday 10 October, at a midterm rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, President Trump said the US would make a new trade deal with Mexico and did not need Canada. The Rio Times reported the remarks the next day. It said he gave no date, content or legal form, and that it was unclear whether the deal would sit inside or outside the USMCA (the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the trade pact that took effect in 2020). Mexico’s government “had not published a response by early Sunday,” the same report said.
In the same speech, Trump promised cash to voters. “I am going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000 every year,” he said, according to KMPH. The payments depended on Republicans winning the House and the Senate. He said tariff revenue would pay for them and later put the cost at about $1 trillion, KMPH reported.

What we think it means

Our view: there is no deal here yet, and there may never be one in the form described. But the direction is clear, and forwarders should plan around it. Washington is treating North American trade as two separate relationships, one with Mexico and one with Canada, not as one three-way pact.
That matters more than any single rally line. A three-way pact means one set of rules of origin (the rules that decide whether a good counts as North American and qualifies for zero duty). Two bilateral tracks can mean two rulebooks, two sets of deadlines and two different tariff risks on lanes that often carry parts of the same supply chain.
We also read the $5,000 pledge as a tariff signal. A president who says tariffs will fund $5,000 a year for every adult, at a cost he puts at about $1 trillion, is not about to cut them. Our view is that forwarders should assume today’s tariff regime stays in place through at least the US midterm elections, and plan customs costs that way.

The record behind the rhetoric

This was not a one-off. The rally fits a pattern that runs back through the summer.
In June, Trump said of the USMCA that he was “not looking to renew it,” PBS NewsHour reported. He added: “We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy.” PBS noted that without a commitment by 1 July, the pact would face annual reviews and could expire in 2036.
That is what happened. The USMCA’s first joint review fell on 1 July 2026, and the US did not agree to extend the pact, according to The Rio Times. The agreement is still in force, but it is now reviewed year by year instead of running quietly to 2036.
The next formal step is under way. On 2 October, USTR (the Office of the US Trade Representative) opened a public consultation ahead of the 2027 joint review. “The deadline for submission of comments is January 12, 2027, at 11:59 p.m. EST,” the release says. USTR has not yet set a date or place for the public hearing. It says those details will be posted on its website.
Canada already has a date on the calendar. On 24 August, Trump threatened 50% tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts and steel “beginning Jan. 1, 2027,” ABC News 4 reported. That was a threat, not a tariff in force. The same report said 50% tariffs had been put on about $20 billion of Canadian imports two days earlier, about 5% of Canada’s yearly exports to the US. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada would hit back “dollar for dollar” from 8 September. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer played down the effect: “We don’t actually expect a huge impact,” he said.
The deficit numbers show why Mexico and Canada are being treated differently in the rhetoric. The US goods deficit with Mexico was $197.0 billion in 2025, up from $168.6 billion in 2024, according to US Census Bureau data cited by The Rio Times. The deficit with Canada was $48.3 billion. The Rio Times put the January–August 2026 gap with Mexico at $155.9 billion. On those figures, the bigger deficit is with Mexico, yet Mexico is the one being offered a deal. Our read is that this is about leverage and politics, not the trade balance.
Betting markets are not convinced either. As of early 11 October, the prediction market Polymarket gave a formal USMCA extension in 2026 a 9.5% chance, The Rio Times reported. It gave a new US–Mexico deal before 2027 a 12.5% chance, though the paper noted that market was thinly traded. Those are not forecasts we rely on. But they show that people putting money on the outcome see a signed bilateral deal this year as unlikely.

Where the freight actually moves

The freight data tell a different story from the speeches. Trade with Mexico is growing fast.
North American transborder freight (goods crossing the US border with Canada or Mexico) was worth $157.6 billion in July 2026, up 18.8% from July 2025, the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported on 23 September. US–Mexico freight was $94.8 billion, up 27.5%. US–Canada freight was $62.8 billion, up 7.8%.
Trucks carried $108.2 billion of that total, up 23.9%. Rail carried $15.6 billion, up 8.7%. Pipelines carried $10.4 billion, vessels $9.9 billion and air $5.9 billion, which was the only mode down, by 3.8%.
The busiest crossing was Laredo, Texas, at about $35.9 billion in July, BTS data show. Ysleta, Texas, was second at about $17.5 billion. Detroit, Michigan, the top Canada gateway, was third at about $12.7 billion, followed by Port Huron, Michigan, at about $8.5 billion.
Two notes of caution. These are values, not volumes, so price rises and tariff costs can inflate them. And one month is one month. Still, a 27.5% jump on the Mexico side against 7.8% on the Canada side is a wide gap.

What this means for forwarders

Our view: forwarders on North American lanes need two plans, not one.
On the Canada side, 1 January 2027 is the date that matters. If the 50% tariffs on autos, parts and steel go ahead, importers have a strong reason to move goods before then. That means more pressure on cross-border trucking through Detroit, Port Huron and Buffalo in November and December. It also means more demand for bonded warehousing (storage where duty is paid only when goods leave) and for customs advice on what counts as an “automotive part”. Forwarders should be talking to auto and steel shippers now about timing, not in mid-December.
Canada’s retaliation adds a second layer. Carney’s “dollar for dollar” response targets US goods heading north. Forwarders handling southbound and northbound loads for the same customers should expect costs on both sides of the border.
On the Mexico side, the growth is real, but the policy is not settled. A Mexico-only deal could, in theory, give Mexican goods a clearer path than Canadian goods. But Trump gave no text, no date and no legal form. Mexico had not responded by Sunday. Shippers who move production to Mexico on the strength of a rally line are taking a policy risk. Our advice is to treat nearshoring decisions as long-term bets that need to survive several more rounds of this.
The USMCA review is the one fixed process. Shippers and forwarders with a view on rules of origin, border processing or customs rules can file comments with USTR until 12 January 2027. That is the formal channel. Rally speeches are not.
Mixed supply chains face the most risk. Many auto parts cross the US–Canada and US–Mexico borders more than once before they end up in a finished vehicle. If the two borders end up under different rules, a part that crosses both could face two different duty treatments. Forwarders should map which customer flows touch both borders now.

Our call

Our prediction: no US–Mexico deal text will be published before USTR’s 12 January 2027 comment deadline. Talk of a “new deal” will continue through the midterm campaign, but the USMCA will stay in force, with its yearly reviews, into 2027.
We also expect US–Canada auto and steel freight to be pulled forward into November and December 2026 as importers try to beat the 1 January date. We expect that to show up as a jump in US–Canada truck freight values when BTS publishes December 2026 data, likely in February 2027. If the 50% tariffs are delayed or narrowed before then, we expect that pull-forward to be smaller, but not to disappear, because shippers will not trust the date to hold.

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