Canada, Mexico and the United States enter this period of economic uncertainty with an advantage most regions would envy. Together, our three countries represent roughly $37 trillion in economic output—about 29% of global GDP—with approximately 519 million people, just 6.4% of the world's population. We have energy, natural resources, industrial capacity, research institutions, capital, technology, talent and one of the world's largest consumer markets.

But having the assets is not the same as having a strategy.

As negotiations over the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement continue, we should apply a simple business test to the choices ahead:

• Will this framework make a successful 20-year investment in North America easier, more predictable and more resilient?

That question matters because long-term capital does not move on political timelines. I spent 70 quarters inside global public companies, where every quarter can feel like the most important one of your career. But when a company decides where to build a factory, locate a research center, expand production or reorganize a supply chain, it is making a bet that may need to work for decades.

Investment can absorb disagreement. What it struggles to absorb is uncertainty.

The first USMCA review reached a consequential point this summer. The agreement remains in force, but the review did not conclude with a new 16-year extension, and negotiations are continuing. That makes this more than a debate about the trade disagreements of the moment. Decisions being made now will influence where companies put capital for years.

Chicago offers a useful lesson in why connecting capabilities matters.

Illinois conducted more than $291 billion in two-way international goods trade in 2025. Roughly $107 billion of it—about 37%—was with Canada and Mexico. Metropolitan Chicago sits at the center of that commerce. About half of all U.S. intermodal trains pass through the region, and O'Hare handled more than 2.1 million metric tons of cargo last year.

Geography gave Chicago a head start. Connectivity turned it into an economic advantage.

We often describe Chicago's proposition in three words: People, Place, and Power. More than 159,000 students completed postsecondary programs across the metro area in 2025, the third-highest total among U.S. metropolitan areas. More than 430 Chicago-area startups raised venture capital that year. And our economy is unusually diversified: no single sector represents more than 13% of Chicagoland's economy, compared with nearly 18% for finance and insurance in New York and more than 23% for technology and information in the San Francisco Bay Area.

That diversity matters because the industries defining the next economy do not develop in isolation. AI meets manufacturing. Computing meets life sciences. Finance meets energy. Research becomes valuable when companies can commercialize it, hire people and reach customers.

The same logic applies across North America.

Consider autos and electric vehicles. The United States brings enormous research, design, capital and advanced-manufacturing capacity. Canada possesses critical minerals, battery-material capabilities and a substantial automotive base. Mexico brings one of the world's deepest vehicle-assembly and supplier networks. Mexico alone produces millions of vehicles annually and has developed extensive Tier 1 and Tier 2 supplier capacity, while Canada is investing heavily across the critical-minerals and battery value chain.

Or consider semiconductors and advanced electronics. The United States remains a leader in chip design and is investing heavily in domestic fabrication. Canada has specialized strength in compound semiconductors and photonics; its Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre is the only end-to-end pure-play compound-semiconductor facility of its kind in North America. Mexico has established electronics-manufacturing capabilities and growing capacity in semiconductor assembly, testing and packaging.

The point is not that every supply chain should cross every border. It is that economic security does not require three countries to reproduce every capability independently.

We should distinguish dependence that creates vulnerability from integration that creates strength.

That distinction should guide the USMCA review. The three governments should direct the agreement's competitiveness work toward a practical North American investment agenda for strategic industries: identify the most consequential cross-border obstacles to investment and production, name the agencies responsible for resolving them, and establish deadlines for doing so. Customs delays, inconsistent standards, regulatory incompatibility, weak enforcement and non-North American content that exploits regional preferences should be treated as problems to solve—not permanent features of doing business here.

There is already a real economic constituency for getting this right. Canadian and Mexican companies employ more than 59,000 people at more than 1,500 locations across Illinois. Those are not abstract trade flows. They are employers, workers, suppliers, and investments embedded in our economy.

National interests will remain national. Sovereignty matters. Economic security matters. Enforcement matters. The United States, Canada and Mexico will continue to disagree, sometimes sharply.

But disagreement should not obscure North America’s competitive advantage.

The next generation of factories, laboratories, data centers, advanced technologies and supply chains will be built somewhere. North America has nearly every ingredient required to win an extraordinary share of that investment.

Chicago's experience suggests the missing ingredient is often not another asset. It is the ability to connect the assets we already have.

That should be the North American Way: not integration for its own sake, but integration where it makes investment stronger, supply chains safer and each of our economies more competitive.

The assets are already here. The work now is to make them easier to use together.