USMCA Rules of Origin Are Under Review. Here's What to Check Before They Change.

If you import under USMCA, the content rules that decide whether your goods cross the border duty-free are not settled. They are being renegotiated right now, and the direction is toward stricter, not looser.

Here is where it stands as of late July 2026. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has formally recommended tightening the rules of origin, beginning with automobiles, on a framework that already carries the highest content thresholds of any trade agreement currently in force. That recommendation is part of the USMCA Joint Review, which is now well underway. Ambassador Jamieson Greer met Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City on July 23 for the third bilateral negotiating round, alongside Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. According to the joint statement, the two sides covered economic security, labor, agriculture, electronic payment services, steel and aluminum and their derivative products, and automobiles, and pointed to the urgency of growing North American manufacturing, strengthening regional supply chains, and addressing free-riding from non-parties. The fourth round is set for Washington in September.

The phrase worth reading twice is "free-riding from non-parties." That is the language of closing the door on non-North-American content, principally Chinese inputs routed through Mexico or Canada to claim USMCA treatment. Tightening rules of origin is the mechanism for doing it.

Not everyone is on board. Mexican and U.S. companies have pushed back, warning that raising the content bar would raise supply-chain costs and could deter the nearshoring investment that arrived in Mexico and Canada in the first place. So the outcome is not decided. But the recommendation is on the table, and the reporting so far (Mexico Business) points to autos built in Mexico soon facing a higher North American content requirement.

How this shows up on your entries

Rules of origin are what separate a duty-free USMCA entry from one that pays. If a product no longer meets the regional value content requirement, it loses preference and falls back to the general rate, and for metals and autos that can mean stacking Section 232 exposure on top. The automotive requirement already sits at 75% regional value content. If the bar moves up, a vehicle or part that qualifies today on a thin margin may not qualify tomorrow, without anything about your sourcing having changed.

The review is starting with autos, but the negotiating agenda named steel, aluminum, and derivative products as well. If you file in those chapters, this is not someone else's problem.

What to do while it is still in negotiation

The useful work happens now, before any change takes effect. Pull your USMCA-qualifying products and re-run the regional value content on the ones that clear on a slim margin, so you know exactly which entries are exposed if the threshold rises. Keep your origin documentation and supplier content data current rather than assuming last year's certification still describes reality. Then model the downside: for each thin-margin product, know what duty actually applies if it fails USMCA, so a rule change becomes a number you already have instead of a scramble at the line.

Nothing here asks you to act on a rule that has not landed. It asks you to know where you stand before it does.

We are tracking every round of the Joint Review as it happens on our Trade Alerts page, and you can run your own products through our tools to see where your margins sit. More on the corridor on the blog. If you want this kind of monitoring working quietly in the background for your entries, start free.

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