Canada, Mexico and the United States are jointly hosting this year’s FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial soccer tournament that is the world’s largest sporting event. In a WPR briefing a few months ago, Benjamin Gedan and Beatriz García Nice (my colleagues at the Stimson Center, where I am a nonresident fellow) wrote that the three countries of North America could capitalize on the goodwill generated by the tournament to work on their mutual agenda of trade and security. Instead, however, on the first day of July, the United States announced it would not renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the trade deal governing more than $1.9 trillion in annual commerce among the three neighbors.
U.S. President Donald Trump did not care about the dissonance of the multilateral snub, coming amid what has been a thrilling edition of the World Cup. By the same token, however, neither Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum nor Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has used the tournament to improve relations with their North American neighbors.
A photo of the three leaders watching a match amicably together would have calmed markets, reassured investors and given negotiators high-level political cover to work. Yet, each leader had logical reasons to reject such a meeting.