President Donald Trump told a packed Kansas arena on Monday night that the United States and Mexico are on the verge of a new trade agreement, announcing at Sen. Roger Marshall's rally in Park City that the two countries are “very close” to agreeing to a “great” trade deal.
“Very close” to a “great” trade deal.
The announcement, reported by Reuters from the rally at the Heartland Credit Union Arena, came with no timetable and no published text. Trump did not lay out tariff schedules or specific commitments from either side. What he made clear is that months of structured work between Washington and Mexico City are nearing the finish line — and that he intends to close it.
The talks have been running inside preparations for the joint review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the USMCA, which remains the formal framework for North American trade. The two sides opened an initial round of bilateral discussions in March, working on measures to direct the agreement's benefits primarily to its own parties, reduce dependence on imports from outside the region, strengthen rules of origin and improve the security of North American supply chains, with negotiators expected to meet regularly.
By July, the agenda had become more detailed. Trade representatives and Mexican officials took up steel and aluminium products, automobiles, economic security, labour, agriculture and electronic payment services. During the third bilateral negotiating round, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City, and the two reviewed the status of the discussions across those subjects and directed their teams to convene a fourth round in Washington in September.
Sheinbaum, for her part, has confirmed that the work is real and continuing. She says her telephone conversations with Trump have covered security and trade, and that the trade discussion regularly turns to the United States' concern about its deficit with Mexico, with the teams continuing to work to see whether they can reach an agreement. Energy has featured in the conversations as well: Sheinbaum says Trump has raised the possibility of Mexico increasing its purchases of United States natural gas, while Mexico points to five new combined-cycle power plants and its own plans to expand domestic natural-gas development. She also says Trump has not sought Pemex assets in exchange for signing a commercial agreement, and that any participation must comply with Mexico's constitution and laws.
Trump delivered the trade news in the middle of a speech of more than 90 minutes that opened his seven-state closing sprint before the November 3 midterms, the same night he announced an 8-billion-dollar Harvest Fuel Relief Program for farmers and urged the crowd to turn out for Marshall. With 15 days left in the campaign, the president is pairing his closing political argument with a closing economic one: a deal with Mexico, negotiated on his terms, nearly done. The next word belongs to the negotiators — and on Trump's telling from the Park City stage, it is not far away.