As officials work out the details of updating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), Nebraska’s agriculture leaders and U.S. Rep. Don Bacon met Wednesday to discuss the consequences of the trade deal. President Trump’s administration is currently renegotiating the agreement.
At the roundtable event in Omaha, Bacon said the USMCA has been vital to keeping the American agriculture market stable through export power.
“[Mexico is] number one and [Canada is] number two overall when you combine not just soybeans but corn, beef, corn, and the whole works, so this is very important,” Bacon said.
The USMCA governs import and export quotas for the three countries and promotes collaboration to manufacture consumer goods, create labor standards, provide energy supplies and compete in a global market.
The event brought together leaders from multiple sectors of Nebraska agribusiness. Farmers for Free Trade, an association of agriculture groups promoting free trade, sponsored the event as part of its national roundtable series.
“About $60 billion a year in food and ag products are exported from the U.S. to Mexico and Canada – so it’s really high stakes,” said FFT executive director Brian Kuehl.
Nebraska ranks fifth in the nation for agricultural exports. FFT estimates that Nebraska sent $2 billion in exports to Mexico and Canada in 2025.
Mexico and Canada are the first and second largest export destinations respectively for U.S. food and ag products. Overall, USMCA represents $1.8 trillion per year in goods traded between the three countries.
With that amount of money on the table, the outcome of the renegotiated agreement could land close to American farmers.
The art of the deal
USMCA began in 2020 after President Donald Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. The deal required a review period after six years, which arrived in 2026.
A July 1, 2026, deadline for new USMCA terms came and went, but there is still time to come to an amended agreement.
“As long as they're negotiating, the agreement continues for at least the next decade,” Kuehl said. “But we would like to get it extended for 16 years, just because that creates more certainty and more stability.”
The Trump administration is choosing to hold annual renegotiations for the next 10 years, rather than a one-time deal with a hard cutoff in 2036.
The ag leaders say the USMCA will prop up a struggling farm economy dealing with high input costs and low commodity sale prices.
Kaitlin Taylor with the Nebraska Corn Growers Association said farmers and ranchers can’t afford the uncertainty of constant renegotiations.
“Right now, our growers are already at negative or little to no return margins,” Taylor said. “This is going on for years and years on end. We can't afford to lose the market that is so important to our industry.”
President of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce Heath Mello said tariffs and trade deals also affect manufacturing, which in turn affects equipment costs for farmers and banking and financial services.
“The initial impact on production agriculture has a direct impact that starts flowing down through the rest of the ag economy in Greater Omaha,” Mello said.
The USMCA also provided about 10,000 jobs to Nebraska in 2025 according to Farmers for Free Trade data.
The stability of the ag market isn’t just about business, said Lucas Miller, President of the Nebraska Soybean Association. It’s about the livelihoods of farm and ranch families.
“It's real input prices for farmers. It's the price that we sell our commodities for. It has a real effect on people in our state,” Miller said. “What are you going to tell those 10,000 people that rely on this agreement to keep the economy running in Nebraska while you're renegotiating?”
The USMCA has helped the pork production industry grow in Nebraska, according to Seth Mitchell, executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association.
“It has provided the certainty and predictability that producers need to invest in their operations, processes need to expand capacity, and customers need to confidently source high-quality and affordable American pork,” Mitchell said.
President Trump has railed against USMCA in past months, suggesting it is unnecessary and instead opting for tariff-based trade policies. Bacon said that strategy has thrown a wrench in the ag market.
“I believe the tariff war is not productive or not helpful for, particularly, the Midwest,” he said. “I think we could maybe look at one or two areas that we want to improve, but this was the best trade deal, I think, ever.”
Bacon said the winner of the trade war hasn’t been the U.S. when it comes to ag – it’s Brazil.
“China has gone extensively to Brazil to buy their products from, and I don't know if we're going to ever recover some trade deals where they have to commit to a certain amount,” Bacon said. “That's not what we want. We want to compete.”
There have been disputes over the fairness of the USMCA – such as with Canada’s dairy purchases or Mexico’s temporary ban on non-GMO corn.
Kuehl said the USMCA includes a legal framework to challenge and enforce pieces of the agreement.
“We didn't have to put tariffs on Mexico. We didn't have to enter into a trade war,” Kuehl said. “I think any time we have a dispute with one of these two countries around trade, the appropriate answer is to go into that USMCA court – not to start putting tariffs on each other.”