Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the fate of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, indirect U.S.-Iran technical talks on the Strait of Hormuz, and joint Japan-India efforts to bolster supply chain security.

From ‘Best Agreement’ to Not Good Enough

The United States decided on Wednesday not to renew its trilateral trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. “We are not going to rubber-stamp renewal, not in its current form,” a senior U.S. administration official told reporters. Instead, Washington opted to conduct annual reviews of the deal’s conditions until its term expires in 2036, paving the way for sweeping renegotiations that could upend nearly $2 trillion in annual goods and services.

U.S. President Donald Trump first proposed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) during a G-20 summit in 2018 as an option to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he had argued was not in the United States’ best interests. “USMCA is the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law,” Trump told supporters in 2020 after its implementation. “It’s the best agreement we’ve ever made.”

Mexico and Canada were similarly happy with the deal. In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s renewal deadline, both Mexico City and Ottawa expressed their desire to extend the agreement.

However, Trump has since soured on his own brainchild, insisting that it hasn’t done enough to stop outsourcing and has contributed to the United States’ trade deficits with both countries. “We don’t need anything that Canada has, we don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have,” Trump said in June. “They have to treat us better.”

“While a trade deficit is an accounting spasm, it consumes the attention of Trump and thus his trade team,” FP’s Keith Johnson told World Brief. Since taking office in January 2025, the White House has tried leveraging tariffs to force Mexico and Canada into what it considers fairer trade practices. Yet a U.S. Supreme Court decision in February that rejected Trump’s sweeping global tariffs have stymied these efforts, forcing the administration to seek alternate methods to make Mexico City and Ottawa pay up.

By triggering yearly reviews of USMCA, Washington opens the door for new trade negotiations with its neighbors. The United States and Mexico have already begun such talks, with a third round scheduled to kick off in Mexico City on July 20. But similar conversations with Ottawa have yet to begin, as Trump’s tariffs and repeated threats to make Canada the United States’ “51st state” have damaged bilateral ties.

Renegotiations are expected to focus on measures that encourage more U.S. manufacturing. One such condition could require that half of a vehicle’s components be made in the United States for that company to receive reduced tariff rates. Still, the senior U.S. administration official told reporters on Wednesday that it is hard to envision relief for tariffs on steel and aluminum since the goal is to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

The Trump administration “will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Wednesday.

In the meantime, the United States will have to walk a fine line between demanding that Mexico and Canada pursue trade reforms and not pushing both countries into China’s arms. “For national security reasons … I want to have our supply chain sourced from this hemisphere,” Greer said in May.

Yet Mexican Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard warned last week that annual reviews would likely create instability that could make it difficult for Mexico City to phase out its reliance on Beijing. “If you drag us into a constant review process, you’re going to choke off investment,” Ebrard said. “That completely defeats the purpose of replacing your Asian suppliers. You can’t have it both ways.”

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What We’re Following

Indirect Hormuz talks. U.S. and Iranian negotiators held indirect technical talks in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday focused on determining control over the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran maintains that it has sole authority over the strategic waterway, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil normally transits, and it has pushed for the right to levy fees on ships traversing the thoroughfare. However, Washington insists that no single country should have exclusive control over the strait and that charging transit fees would violate international law.

Indirect talks began on Tuesday, with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meeting with Qatari mediators, including the country’s prime minister. The Qataris also met with Iranian officials, led by Deputy ‌Foreign Minister ⁠Kazem Gharibabadi, who reportedly prioritized the potential release of frozen Iranian assets, as promised under a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding. There are no plans for direct meetings in the near future.

But with both sides still at an impasse, concerns are growing that active fighting could reignite, especially after U.S. and Iranian forces engaged in tit-for-tat strikes over the weekend. Even Trump has reportedly considered returning to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in recent days.

Yet global markets appear more optimistic. West Texas Intermediate crude on Wednesday reached its lowest price since March, hitting ⁠just under $69 ​a barrel. Brent futures also went down to nearly $72 a barrel.

An LNG partnership. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to sign a trade deal that would bolster supply chain security, specifically for liquefied natural gas (LNG), during a summit that began on Wednesday. The pact would direct Tokyo and New Delhi to establish a joint task force to coordinate LNG stockpiling, promote information-sharing, and improve energy cooperation. Both countries hope to mitigate the impact of the Iran war, as instability in the Strait of Hormuz has greatly disrupted global energy markets.

The two leaders’ three-day summit, held in India, is also expected to touch on artificial intelligence, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors as well as regional security concerns, such as efforts to strengthen the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Takaichi is hoping that closer Japan-India ties will help curb Beijing’s sway.

Bilateral trade in the 2025-26 fiscal year reached $27.5 billion, with Japanese investments in India totaling $3.2 billion between April and December 2025. Tokyo is among New Delhi’s largest investors, and last year, Takaichi pledged to more than double her country’s investments to more than $61 billion over the next decade.

Political targets. Three firebomb attacks early Wednesday targeted members of Greece’s ruling New Democracy party. According to local authorities, crude explosive devices that used camping gas canisters were discovered outside the residences of several party members in the city of Thessaloniki. At least one person was killed and four others hospitalized, including parliamentary candidate Afroditi Nestora, who is being treated for burns, as well as members of her family.

“The world of New Democracy is not intimidated,” Konstantinos Kyranakis, the conservative party’s political committee secretary, wrote on X. The bombings were a “full-fledged terrorist attack on the homes of New Democracy executives,” Kyranakis said, as “those who carried it out intended to kill.”

Politically motivated attacks are relatively frequent in Greece, though assaults on symbols of power and wealth rarely cause injuries. However, in June 2024, a gasoline bomb injured a police officer guarding the home of a top judge in Athens, and roughly a year later, a bomb outside the residence of the president of Greece’s association of prison guards caused minor injuries to two individuals.

Odds and Ends

Trump earned at least $2.2 billion during the first year of his second term, including around $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency enterprises, a new filing released on Tuesday revealed. That is a massive boost from the roughly $622 million that his businesses took in during 2024. Trump and his relatives have repeatedly been accused of using the White House to leverage deals with foreign governments, including a $500 million agreement with an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates. Trump on Wednesday dismissed such concerns, telling reporters that he has “funds that run my money” and that “I never even speak to them.”