On January 30, 2020, in Warren, Michigan, President Trump stood with autoworkers and sold them a trade deal. The USMCA, he said, was "the best agreement we've ever made," and it would "create up to 80,000 - minimum - 80,000 - probably about 120,000 - new jobs." [4] The deal it replaced, NAFTA, he called the worst ever made by any country. [4]
On June 30, 2026, his administration declared it will not renew the USMCA. [5] The reason it gave is the trade deficit. [5]
That is worth sitting with, because it is the cleanest kind of fact-check there is: the person rebutting the promise is the person who made it.
The number he is now citing
When the administration explains why it is walking away, it points to the goods trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. [5] Here is what those deficits did under the deal Trump signed. By the U.S. Census Bureau's own figures, the goods deficit with Mexico went from $111.0 billion in 2020 to $197.0 billion in 2025, up about 78 percent. [1] The deficit with Canada went from $13.8 billion to $48.3 billion, more than triple. [2] The Bureau of Economic Analysis, on its own accounting, reports the same direction: roughly $197 billion with Mexico and $46 billion with Canada in 2025. [3]
Data
| Mexico 2020 | 111$ billions |
|---|---|
| Mexico 2025 | 197$ billions |
| Canada 2020 | 14$ billions |
| Canada 2025 | 48$ billions |
The promise, measured
The deal was sold as the fix for exactly this gap. Under the man who signed it, the gap instead widened, by tens of billions of dollars a year. [1][2] The promised flood of new auto jobs is not something the administration is pointing to either; it is not citing jobs as a reason to keep the deal. What it is citing is the deficit, the number that moved the wrong way.
The part that is fair
Honesty requires the other side. A trade deficit is not a national scorecard of winning and losing. Economists across the spectrum will tell you it reflects savings, investment, and the strength of the dollar at least as much as any single trade deal, and a bigger deficit is not automatically a "loss." By that honest standard, USMCA did not "cause" the wider deficit any more than it would have earned credit for a smaller one. The point here is narrower, and it is his own: he promised the deal would shrink the gap, he is ending it because the gap grew, and a number cannot be the deal's fault only when it is convenient.
The bottom line
The pitch was that USMCA was the best trade deal ever made, a win for autoworkers worth up to 120,000 jobs. The administration is ending it because the trade deficits with Mexico and Canada widened sharply, by the government's own count. A deal can be oversold by the person who signs it and scrapped by the same person who blames it. The numbers do not change based on who is reading them, and the deficit Trump promised to shrink is the one he is now citing to walk away, bigger than when he started.
