USMCA lost opportunity to actually implement freer trade between Canada and U.S.

VANCOUVER—The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—NAFTA’s recently-negotiated replacement—represents a missed opportunity to create freer trade across North America, according to a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. “We had a chance with these negotiations to truly liberalize trade between Canada and the U.S., but that opportunity was squandered because both sides came to the table with a list of protected industries that were off-limits from the start,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics and co-author of The U.S.-Mexico-Canada-Agreement: Overview and Outlook.