On Monday, June 29 at 9:00AM-10:20AM EDT, ICAS will hold a virtual discussion, “USMCA Joint Review: Where To from Here?”, with panelists Diego de Leon Segovia (Director at APCO), David Collins (Professor of International Economic Law at The City Law School), Wenting He (Postdoctoral Scholar at The China Institute, University of Alberta) and Enrique Dussel Peters (Professor, Graduate School of Economics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). Moderating the discussion is Sourabh Gupta, Senior Fellow and Head of the Trade n’ Technology Program at ICAS. Full bios for each participant can be found below.
On July 1, 2026, as per article 34.7 of USMCA, the U.S., Canada and Mexico are due to meet on the sixth anniversary of the agreement’s entry into force for a first joint review of the agreement. The joint review is a novel one, with no precedent for such reviews in prior U.S. FTA’s. The review is an important inflection moment in the short history of the revised – NAFTA revised to USMCA – agreement. If all three parties agree in writing, the USMCA will be automatically extended for sixteen years, with another joint review six years hence. If the parties fail to agree, a tortuous annual negotiating process will lie ahead, with major implications for industries and businesses including those headquartered much beyond North America.
What are the Trump administration’s key demands going into the USMCA joint review? How have the parallel U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico discussion tracks proceeded so far? What will be the review’s key impacts on existing and proposed East Asian manufacturing investments, especially Chinese investments, within the bloc? How will the proposed revision of rules of origin (ROOs) impact North American auto production? What is the scorecard on the dispute settlement provisions of the agreement? In the event of a stalemate within the review process, what are the next steps that businesses on both sides of the Pacific should be aware of?
Diego de León Segovia is a Director based in New York where he is a member of the Office of the Executive Chair (OXC). Diego supports senior level officers to coordinate and advance APCO’s OXC projects in Latin America and other strategic regions, especially those regarding climate change. Before joining APCO, Diego served as director for urban, energy and infrastructure affairs and director for climate change at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he oversaw the supervision of bilateral and multilateral negotiations related to these topics.
Professor David Collins specializes in the law of the World Trade Organization and international investment law. He also heads City Law School’s Digital Trade Research Group. David was nominated to the roster of panellists for NAFTA (now USMCA)’s trade remedies disputes by the government of Canada and to the panel of arbitrators for EU and UK free trade agreements by the European Commission and the British government respectively. He has been an oral witness for the UK parliament’s International Trade Committee (HoC) and International Agreements Committee (HoL) as well as for the Canadian parliament’s International Trade Committee (HoC). In 2025 the WTO Secretariat appointed him to the roster of experts under Art 27.2 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding.
Wenting He is a postdoctoral scholar at The China Institute, University of Alberta. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University. Her research focuses on economic ideas, economic crises, development finance, and geoeconomics, with a particular expertise on China. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as The China Quarterly and Asia Policy. Beyond academic research, Wenting is actively engaged in both teaching and policy communities. She has taught in 15 university courses in International Relations and has delivered 4 executive education programs on China’s foreign and economic policies for the Australian Government.
Enrique Dussel Peters has a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Notre Dame (1996). Professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) since 1993. Coordinator of the Center for Chinese-Mexican Studies (Cechimex) of the School of Economics at UNAM and of the Academic Network of Latin America and the Caribbean on China (Red ALC-China). Member of Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (level 3). Research topics that interest him include economic development, political economy, industrial organization, and trade theory; NAFTA and CAFTA; evolution of industrial, trade, and regional patterns in Latin America and Mexico. As an ongoing project, he is coordinating a group of studies and respective publications of China’s overseas foreign direct investment (OFDI) in Latin America and Mexico and of Mexican firms in China.
Sourabh Gupta is a senior Asia-Pacific international relations policy specialist with two decades of Washington, D.C.-based experience in a think tank and political risk research and advisory capacity. His key area of expertise pertains to the intersection of international law, both international trade and investment law and international maritime law (Law of the Sea), with the international relations of the Asia-Pacific region. His areas of specialization include: U.S.-China trade and technology competition; analysis of developments in World Trade Organization and Asia-Pacific economic regionalism; analysis of major power relationships (China-U.S., China-Japan, China-India, U.S.-Japan, U.S.-India, Japan-India; Russia-Japan relations) and key flashpoint issues in the Asia-Pacific region; and analysis of outstanding territorial disputes and maritime law-related developments. He is a member of the United States Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (USCSCAP).