I have a new oped out in the Globe and Mail, on why Canada should not renegotiate our trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, the United States Canada Mexico Agreement (USMCA in the US, CUSMA in Canada, T-MEC in Mexico). The US itself has been pushing for a quicker renegotiation, while some pundits and premiers, such as Québec Premier François Legault, have been calling for renegotiation in order to end the current uncertainty in the relationship.

Their arguments are, to be blunt, nonsense.

The problem in the North American economic relationship isn’t with the USMCA, however it’s named. The problem is that the United States is not honouring the current agreement. To imagine that Trump’s and Musk’s United States would honour a new agreement when they don’t stand by their existing ones is pure magical thinking.

Legault and other renegotiation supporters are practicing cargo-cult policymaking. They want to continue doing the thing they did in the past without understanding why the thing they’re doing (negotiating agreements) delivered prosperity.

Trade agreements aren’t some magical economic-growth device that anyone can use at any time. They only work under specific circumstances. When you try to use them inappropriately, they can lead to disastrous outcomes.

The circumstances that allowed trade agreements to do their thing — a global respect for sovereignty and the rule of law — no longer hold.

It only makes sense to negotiate trade agreements when all parties can be trusted to abide by its terms, more or less. There is no global police to enforce international law, so you have to trust your partners. The United States has made it very clear that it does not feel bound by any of its agreements. That’s kind of what it means to dismantle the liberal international order.

Under these conditions, any agreement Canada and Mexico signed with the United States would serve to bind the smaller countries while leaving the US free to do what it wants, when it wants. It would not be an agreement between sovereign equals, but between master and servants.

If we renegotiate, I guarantee you there will be even more onerous terms that have nothing to do with North American trade and everything to do with cementing US dominance over our economies and our future. Already, the USMCA includes clauses limiting countries’ ability to set independent monetary policy, and that effectively give the United States a veto over any future Canadian and Mexican trade agreements with China.

What does any of that have to do with North American trade, you ask? Absolutely nothing. But it shows how the US uses the carrot and stick of access to its market force concessions on countries.

Trade agreements are supposed to protect the policy autonomy of the smaller party. The USMCA’s renegotiation clause is already being used to attack Canadian tax and cultural policies. If we renegotiate, expect more of that in pretty much every area of our economy.

This time around, I would bet any amount of money that Musk’s US government will go hard after anything that restricts his companies’ interests: bans on any online harms regulations or restrictions on self-driving cars or AI safety regulations. Policies in Canada’s interest that have nothing to do with trade.

Remember all of Trump’s talk about economic coercion? This is exactly what he has in mind. And there’s a process in place to deliver it: the USMCA renegotiations.

Negotiating, or renegotiating a trade agreement with an expansionist, authoritarian country like the US makes absolutely no sense. It would only serve to tie our hands at the very moment we need to reorient the Canadian economy. The whole point of the USMCA, from the US perspective, is to prevent this much-needed reorientation from happening at all. They want to tie us to the US mast.

To be clear, not having a trade agreement is not the same as not having any trade. Agreement or no, trade will continue among the three countries because each has and can do things that the others want or need. The only difference is that trade would take place without the false sense of security provided by a dead-letter agreement.

Any new or renegotiated trade agreement wouldn’t deliver the mutually shared benefits that people tend to associate with free trade agreements, because the world in which that was possible no longer exists. Instead, the new USMCA would bind only the weaker parties: Canada and Mexico. It wouldn’t be formal annexation, but it is, for the US, the next best thing.