As a legal and policy expert on inter-tribal trade between Canada and the United States, Wayne Garnons-Williams says it remains to be seen what might happen when Canada sits down to renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) with a second Trump administration.
“We had Canada’s Indigenous trade agenda, which was trying to put an Indigenous chapter into USMCA (in 2019). Didn’t succeed all the way, got very close to getting it but it was killed by the Trump administration,” Wayne Garnons-Williams said. “…Now that we have those policies, will they stand the test against a second Trump administration when we try to play a card…Under a Trump administration, under their policies, I don’t know.”
Canada renegotiated the trade agreement with a Trump White House and Mexico in 2019 and the agreement is set to head into review again in 2026, barring the full reopening of the USMCA as promised by President Trump .
To view the APTN interview with Garnons-Williams hit the link below and scroll to time index 16 min. in the Nations to Nation show.
Garnons-Williams is also senior lawyer with Garwill Law Professional Corporation, Lecturer at Waterloo University in the Indigenous Entrepreneur Program and CEO of the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation.
He is also a Research Fellow specializing in International Comparative Indigenous law at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law as well as a Senior Legal Fellow for the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law. He was appointed by Order in Council as a member to the NAFTA Chapter 19 Trade Remedies roster and then appointed in 2020 as a CUSMA Advisory Committee Member on Private Commercial Disputes, Article 31.22.
Garnons-Williams co-authored a textbook entitled Indigenous Peoples Inspiring Sustainable Development, with leading International Environmental law professor, Dr. Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2025 on International Indigenous Trade & Environmental law and is teaching a course based on his textbook as part of the Bachelor of Indigenous Entrepreneurialism Program at United College, University of Waterloo.
Inter-Tribal Trade expert Wayne Garnons-Williams talking with Nation to Nation. Photo: Mark Blackburn/APTN
