Trade talks with the United States are “very advanced,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday, a day after Washington broke off similar negotiations with Canada.
Mexico, the United States and Canada are part of the three-member USMCA North American free trade agreement up for review next year.
Sheinbaum declined to say whether her country would pursue a bilateral pact with Washington.
Her economy minister, the president said, would meet members of President Donald Trump’s administration on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in South Korea next week.
Trump has said he wants to renegotiate the USMCA on terms more favorable to US manufacturers.
The USMCA in 2020 replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in the 1990s.
It is critical to the economies of both Mexico and Canada, which respectively send around 80 percent and 75 percent of their exports to the United States.
Trump has already imposed tariffs on some exports from Canada and Mexico that do not fall under the agreement and threatened further punishment if they fail to curb cross-border migration and drug trafficking.
Trump’s trade war has significantly disrupted cross-border supply chains.
He has hit Canadian goods that fall outside the agreement with 35-percent duties and similar Mexican goods with 25-percent levies.
On Thursday, Trump said he had “terminated” trade talks with Canada over an anti-tariff advertising campaign produced by the Canadian province of Ontario for US television.
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