How Trump Wants Your Car To Be More American Than Ever

The Trump administration is looking to overhaul the rules governing automotive trade between the United States and Mexico.

According to a Reuters report, U.S. negotiators have proposed raising the regional content requirement for passenger vehicles and light trucks from the current 75 percent to 82 percent. More notably, half of that value would need to originate specifically from the United States.

The newest proposal was couched during the latest round of bilateral trade talks between U.S. and Mexican officials in Mexico City as part of ongoing efforts to revise the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Canada was not included in the negotiations.

If the rules are formalized, the changes would be one of the biggest changes to North American automotive trade since the original North American Free Trade Agreement was drafted in the mid-nineties.

Today, vehicles qualify for preferential tariff treatment under USMCA if at least 75 percent of their content originates within North America. The agreement also includes labor-value requirements that effectively push a significant chunk of vehicle component production to higher-wage regions in the United States and Canada, rather than Mexico.

The new proposal would go further by establishing a dedicated U.S. content requirement. Under the reported framework, vehicles would need to meet both the higher 82 percent regional threshold and a separate requirement that 50 percent of their value be sourced from the United States.

According to the report, the proposal does not include any mechanism to count Canadian content toward that U.S. threshold, bringing back much of the supply chain anxiety that dominated the 2025 automotive news cycle.

Automakers have spent decades building integrated manufacturing networks across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Engines, transmissions, electronics, and vehicle assemblies often cross borders multiple times before a finished vehicle reaches the showroom.

Raising content requirements could force manufacturers to rethink sourcing strategies and potentially relocate production of certain components to the United States in order to remain compliant.

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