Thank you very much for your question.
This is a trilateral negotiation that is going to take place, but I think we should be under no illusions that it's going to have its own bilateral elements to it. The Americans, as quite frankly they did with NAFTA, will try to play us off against the Mexicans. What's different is that Canada's relationship with Mexico has changed quite dramatically since the origins of NAFTA. They're now our third most important trading partner. That has to do with the nature of North American value chains. We're a major investor in Mexico. We did a study at CIGI that showed that some 3,000 Canadian companies are doing business in Mexico. It's an important destination for tourists.
The reverse flow of Mexican investment in Canada is small, but it's also beginning to change. Bimbo, which is a bread manufacturing company, has set up operations in Canada, and I suspect that as the Mexican economy matures, there's likely to be more investment. That is to say is that Canada, the United States, and Mexico have a real interest in maintaining open supply chains across our respective borders. That's particularly true in the automobile sector. However, there are some differences. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants to have tighter content rules of origin, particularly in the manufacturing sector, and his target there is automobiles.
Mexico has a bigger problem than we do, because the Chinese have been using Mexico as a beachhead and exploiting those supply chains to their own commercial advantage, which is a perfectly rational thing to do. When it comes to Canada, we're pretty much in alignment with the U.S. on that issue, so I think that's going to be a pretty contentious issue.
We will have common interests with the Mexicans on some issues. That would certainly be true when it comes to energy, for example, the free flow of energy and investment in the energy sector. That is also true, I would say, in the area of agriculture. But on an issue like migration, which is very contentious, our interests are quite different from the Mexicans'.
I think it's going to be a mixed approach. We join hands with the Mexicans when it suits us and, quite frankly, when it suits them. The Mexicans, by the way, don't need lessons in negotiations from Canadians. They've shown, as we saw in the trucking incident some years ago, that they can play real hardball. They're very effective at mobilizing supportive constituencies in the southern border states of the United States to their advantage. Are we going to be in lockstep with them? No. But does that mean it's divide and conquer when it comes to dealing with the Americans? No.