July 3, 2019
The new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) sets out rules of origin for auto products that need greater clarity to provide certainty for the businesses who must apply them, states a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute.
In “Bumper to Bumper: Will the CUSMA Rules of Origin Make America’s Auto Industry Great Again?” Jon R. Johnson, a former advisor to the Canadian government during the NAFTA negotiations, takes a deep dive into the arcane rules of origin that will determine whether a good is eligible for duty-free treatment and finds they are still unclear in many cases, more stringent than those in NAFTA, and needlessly complex.