MONTREAL – Cara Morrow, Senior Advisor at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Mexico’s Under Secretary of Foreign Trade Alejandro Encinas, and Canada’s Deputy Minister for International Trade Rob Stewart today opened the third United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) Dialogue in Montreal, Canada. They were joined by the Small Business Administration’s Associate Administrator for International Trade, Daniel Krupnick, and small business representatives from the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
The SME Dialogue, established under the USMCA SME Chapter, is convened by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Small Business Administration; Global Affairs Canada and Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service; and the Development Productive Unit and the Vice Ministry of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economy of Mexico. The United States hosted the first SME Dialogue in 2022 in San Antonio, Texas, and Mexico hosted the second in Mexico City in 2023. Discussion at this year’s SME Dialogue hosted by Canada included SME participation in value chains, inclusive trade in North America, customs and regulatory procedures, intellectual property rights protection, access to financing and government resources for SMEs, and e-commerce.
Mexico and Canada are the top two export destinations for U.S. SME goods. In 2023, U.S. goods and services trade with the USMCA Parties totaled over $1.8 trillion with the majority of traders from small businesses. The most recent data, from 2022, shows over 90,000 U.S. SMEs exported over $83 billion in goods to Canada, and over 49,000 U.S. SMEs exported over $110 billion in goods to Mexico. Investments in each other’s economies totaled nearly $1.2 trillion in 2022, which includes small business supply-chains.
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