July 11, 2026

Good morning! Today is Saturday, July 11th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. President Trump has declined to renew the USMCA, the trade pact he himself negotiated, arguing that ballooning deficits with Mexico and Canada and a shrinking manufacturing base prove the deal failed to deliver. Ted Snider contends that the proxy war in Ukraine and the direct war on Iran have raised nuclear risks worldwide, from Finland and Lithuania lifting bans on hosting nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia signing a mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan. W. James Antle III examines how Graham Platner's imploded Senate bid in Maine exposes a dilemma for anti-establishment candidates who routed their party's elites in the primary but remained wholly dependent on those same donors to compete in November. and now for the details. President Trump has decided not to renew the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the trade pact he himself negotiated during his first term. The deal will remain in force until 2036, when it will expire unless all three countries agree to extend it. Trump told reporters in June that the USMCA was, quote, "sort of a good deal, but it was a great deal for one reason. It gave the right to terminate." As Joseph Addington reports, the president is exercising that right because the economic trends the deal was supposed to arrest have only accelerated. Since the USMCA took effect in 2020, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico has nearly doubled, from 111 billion dollars to 197 billion. The deficit with Canada has grown roughly 250 percent. Manufacturing's share of U.S. GDP has slipped from just over 10 percent to 9.4, and there are fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than in January of 2020. Addington notes the USMCA was essentially NAFTA with a new coat of paint—preserving the North American free-trade zone while tightening automotive rules of origin and labor standards. The administration will keep negotiating over the next decade, pushing to strengthen those rules further, but a full replacement framework is not yet on the table. Addington observes that materially altering the arrangement will be difficult, as North American supply chains have grown more integrated, especially as manufacturers shift work from China to Mexico. What replaces the USMCA in 2036 will likely depend on the 2028 election, with Vice President J.D. Vance championing the protectionist line and Secretary of State Marco Rubio closer to the older Republican consensus on free trade. The American proxy war in Ukraine and the direct American war in Iran have raised nuclear risks around the world. That's the argument from Ted Snider, who points out that even Western officials now concede Russia was never poised to march on NATO territory. General Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command, has said Russia is not looking for a wider conflict, and Sweden's prime minister agrees. But the war, Snider writes, has hardened a rigid line across Europe and allowed nuclear weapons to move up against it. Finland, which shares an 830-mile border with Russia, has overturned a decades-old ban on hosting nuclear weapons. Lithuania's parliament last week began lifting a similar constitutional ban. Poland has declared interest in the U.S. nuclear sharing program and has joined France's forward deterrence scheme. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that Finland's move will make it a target. Snider argues the war on Iran has done comparable damage to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran, a signatory, was supposed to be protected in its right to a civilian program. The IAEA found no evidence of an active weapons program, yet did not condemn the strikes. Snider notes that Saudi Arabia has since signed a full mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan, and Gulf states are quietly diversifying away from reliance on American security guarantees. Both wars, he concludes, were sold as making the world safer. Both, in his telling, have done the opposite. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.