If you’d like to win back some of the jobs that Donald Trump’s been killing with his tariffs and other bad policies, tell Trump to sign the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement:
As trade talks aimed at avoiding fresh U.S. tariffs continue, a new report is warning that the breakdown of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement would lead to hundreds of thousands of job losses and major economic impacts on both sides of the border.
The report, prepared for the Canadian American Business Council by Oxford Economics — an independent economic advisory firm — and released Monday, analyzed the likely result of three different outcomes of the ongoing trade talks between the U.S. and Canada.
The scenarios were a status quo situation where current tariffs remain in place, a scenario where the CUSMA agreement breaks down, and one where CUSMA is successfully renegotiated and the trading relationship improves.
In the event that CUSMA were to end, a projected 214,000 American and 102,000 Canadian jobs would be lost, the report said, compared to the status quo scenario.
But if CUSMA were renegotiated successfully, the U.S. and Canada stand to add jobs — 137,000 and 98,000 of them, respectively [Abby Hughes, “CUSMA Breakdown Could Mean Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs, a Trillion Dollars Lost: Report,” CBC, 2026.08.11].
(Oxford Economics—that’s the same outfit that South Dakota hires to analyze its economic activity, so they must be smart.)
Restoring CUSMA by Wednesday’s deadline would also juice our decelerating economic output:
The impacts also extend beyond jobs. According to the report’s estimates, the breakdown scenario would impact the GDP of both countries, costing the U.S. economy $1.04 trillion US and costing Canada $271 billion Cdn by 2035 [Hughes, 2026.08.11].
…and check inflation and leave more money in our pockets:
The pace of inflation would likely pick up in both countries in the immediate and long-term, while growth of real disposable income would be stunted, especially on the Canadian side.
A successful negotiation paints the opposite picture in the report’s projections — more disposable income for citizens on both sides of the border, slower inflation and GDP gains of billions for both countries [Hughes, 2026.08.11].
Trump has declared an unnecessary trade war against Canada, the best trade partner our nation has. This unnecessary trade war works against all the economic promises Trump has made to the American people. Continuing to kick sand in Canada’s face only throws grit in the North American economic machine. Signing CUSMA now puts Americans and Canadians back to work, boosts our closely integrated economies, and gives us all more money to spend on cheaper goods and services.