How Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises will Benefit from the USMCA

How the USMCA will help Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

The USMCA is a new trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico that replaced NAFTA on July 1st of this year. The agreement places a large emphasis on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in North America, including a new feature: a chapter dedicated to SMEs

SMEs in the U.S. exports more goods to Mexico and Canada, respectively than any other country, exporting over $125 billion combined in goods to the two countries in 2016.

The USMCA also establishes new mechanisms designed to help SMEs with cross-border trade and related issues, as well as new opportunities for more trade and investment opportunities for SMEs.

SME owners who are in underrepresented groups will also be given a larger platform to engage with governmental bodies in North America,  with new and better opportunities to voice their opinions on how to adapt the agreement to help their businesses. This means that the USMCA will be more fluid in order to corroborate with SMEs.

More Benefits

The USMCA also provides other benefits for SMEs, including:

• Not requiring SMEs to open a foreign office in order to do business across borders.
• Reducing costs of transactions across the borders of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
• Protecting the intellectual property of SMEs.
• New mechanisms for ensuring regulatory action related to the USMCA are transparent, effective, and do not hinder SME cross-border operation.

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This article is a transcript from one of BridgehouseLaw’s series: Tidbit Tuesday. To watch the original video, click here.

There are many more benefits to SMEs that the USMCA provides that can be found here.

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