By Daniel Covarrubias, Ph.D.

This year, I’ve been teaching courses on Digital Transformation, Cybersecurity, and Systems Design while simultaneously working on policy frameworks for the 2026 USMCA review. The parallel tracks showed me something I might have missed otherwise. Somewhere between grading assignments on AI integration and drafting recommendations for trilateral digital infrastructure, a convergence hit me: the questions my students grapple with are the same questions facing the continent.

How does AI change work? What decisions require human judgment? What processes benefit from machine speed? When does autonomy create value, and when does it create vulnerability? These are the strategic questions that will determine North American competitiveness for the next decade.

2025 has seen me traveling to give keynotes and participate in panels, all the while discussing cross-border trade, digital transformation, and economic integration. What struck me across these conversations, whether in Mexico City, San Antonio, or policy roundtables in Washington, was how the threads kept interweaving. Trade policy. AI governance. Workforce transformation. Energy infrastructure. Continental security. These stopped being separate conversations this year. They became one conversation with different entry points.

As 2025 draws to a close, I want to share what this convergence has taught me and what I believe it will demand of us in 2026.

The Year Uncertainty Became the Product

If I had to characterize 2025 in a single word, it would be uncertainty. Tariff volatility became the defining economic feature of the year. Rules changed quarterly. Exemptions appeared and disappeared. Industries whipsawed between relief and panic depending on which announcement landed that week.

The economic damage isn’t just from tariffs themselves. It’s from the inability to plan. I called this the Precarity Premium: the hidden tax that businesses pay when they cannot forecast what regulatory environment they’ll face six months from now. Investment decisions get delayed. Expansion plans get shelved. Capital is tempted to flow to regions with more predictable policy environments. The uncertainty itself extracts economic cost, separate from any specific tariff rate.

My conversations with business leaders shifted noticeably this year. The question used to be “How do we grow?” Now it’s “How do we survive the unpredictability?” That’s not a sustainable posture for the most integrated manufacturing region on the planet. Companies cannot build supply chains, train workforces, or commit capital when the ground keeps shifting beneath them.

This cannot continue. 2026 will force a resolution one way or another, whether through the USMCA review, market pressure, or competitive losses to regions that offer stability. The Precarity Premium will eventually be paid, either by North American businesses adapting to permanent uncertainty or by policymakers recognizing that predictability itself has economic value.

Shared Security, Shared Prosperity: No Going Back

The framework that crystallized for me this year is simple to state but profound in implications: security and prosperity can no longer be treated as separate policy tracks. For decades, trade negotiators worked in one building while defense and security officials worked in another. That separation made sense when economic interdependence and national security occupied different spheres. It makes no sense today.

Consider what 2025 revealed. Tariffs justified on security grounds caused damage to the prosperity of integrated supply chains. Supply chain security, meanwhile, requires the very production integration that protectionist policies threaten. You cannot secure what you’ve dismantled. The automotive sector alone demonstrates this: parts can cross the border as many as 7 or 8 times before final assembly, meaning security and prosperity are literally welded together in every vehicle rolling off North American assembly lines.

The AI developments of November brought this convergence into sharp relief. In the same month, an AI-generated country track hit No. 1 on a Billboard country sales chart. At the same time, Anthropic, creator of Claude, disclosed disruption of what it described as the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber-espionage campaign. Creation and destruction. Productivity and vulnerability. Same underlying technology, radically different outcomes. The difference wasn’t the AI. It was the human governance framework surrounding it.

This is Shared Security, Shared Prosperity in action. The technology that drives economic growth is also the one that threatens critical infrastructure. The supply chains that create jobs are the same supply chains that require protection. The energy grid that powers AI development is the same grid that adversaries target. North America either coordinates these dimensions together or fragments and loses to competitors who integrate them.

This past week, Mexico’s Congress approved tariff increases of up to 50% on more than 1,400 products, largely affecting imports from countries without free-trade agreements, with China expected to be among the most impacted, effective January 1, 2026. The policy is being read as both industrial defense and strategic positioning ahead of the 2026 USMCA review: tightening exposure to non-regional content while reinforcing the logic of North American rules of origin. It’s a real-time example of the argument in this essay: trade policy is now inseparable from security, competitiveness, and the credibility of regional integration. Security and prosperity, moving together.

The AI Imperative: Why the Continent Must Move Together

I’ve been developing a framework I’m calling the North American Digital Infrastructure Coordination Initiative, or NADICI, which I’ll publish in full before the year ends. The core insight driving this work is straightforward: the United States can win the AI race, but it cannot afford to leave Mexico and Canada behind. This isn’t charity. It’s a strategic necessity. This work builds on the USMCA 2.0 framework I’ve proposed for modernizing North America’s trade architecture.

AI requires energy. Massive amounts of it. North America possesses an integrated energy grid with diverse generation capacity: Canadian hydroelectric, American natural gas, and Mexican solar potential. No single country has all the pieces. Together, the continent has abundant clean power to fuel AI infrastructure that would make competitors envious.

AI requires semiconductors, which require rare earths and critical minerals. Canada has deposits. Mexico has processing potential and manufacturing capacity. The United States has design expertise and fabrication facilities. The EV battery supply chain already demonstrates this trilateral complementarity: Canadian nickel and cobalt, American cell manufacturing and R&D, Mexican pack assembly and vehicle integration. AI chip supply chains will follow similar patterns.

AI requires talent. Not just engineers who build systems, but professionals across every sector who can work alongside AI effectively. I’ve written about the evolution from AI-aware to AI-fluent professionals: people who use these tools reflexively in daily work, who understand both when AI accelerates outcomes and when human judgment must remain in control. The continent that builds AI-fluent workforces across industries wins. The continent that hoards talent in one country while neighbors fall behind loses collective capacity.

AI transforms logistics. This is Logistechs in action: the convergence of logistics operations with exponential technologies. Autonomous vehicles. Predictive customs processing. AI-optimized routing. Smart border infrastructure. These capabilities are emerging now, but they require coordinated standards, shared data frameworks, and harmonized regulations. Fragmented national approaches mean fragmented benefits. Continental coordination means continental advantage.

The alternative is three separate national AI strategies competing against China’s unified approach. Beijing isn’t coordinating with neighbors out of goodwill. They’re doing it because scale wins in AI development. Larger markets for data. Larger pools of talent. Larger energy capacity. Larger manufacturing bases for hardware. China understands that national AI strategies compete against continental ones, and continental ones win. North America has the assets to compete at that scale. The question is whether it organizes to use them.

What I’m Watching in 2026

The USMCA joint review will be the defining North American trade event of 2026. With public consultations and testimony having just passed, the mandatory six-year review triggers a fundamental question: does the trilateral framework that has governed North American commerce since 2020 continue, evolve, or fragment? Our research across North America identified 9.9 million jobs exposed to trade disruptions. Some voices are calling for bilateral deals to replace the trilateral structure, arguing that one-on-one negotiations give the United States more leverage. I have strong views on this question that I’ll share in detail in the new year.

For now, I’ll simply note that what’s at stake is whether thirty years of integration deepens into genuine continental competitiveness or fragments into competing national interests that benefit no one except our global rivals. Thenearly $56 billionMexico–Canadatwo-way merchandise trade in 2024 alone demonstrates why trilateral thinking matters: bilateral U.S. deals would orphan supply chains that currently flow seamlessly across all three borders.

There’s an irony worth noting: 2026 is also the year the United States, Mexico, and Canada co-host the FIFA World Cup, the first men’s World Cup hosted by three nations in history. These three countries will need to coordinate security for millions of visitors, harmonize visa procedures, synchronize transportation across dozens of venues, and present a unified face to the world. If North America can organize that, but can’t figure out how to extend a trade agreement that’s been functioning for thirty years, something has gone badly wrong with its priorities.

AI governance in trade frameworks deserves close attention. USMCA’s digital trade provisions were forward-looking when negotiated, but predate the explosion of generative and agentic AI. How do rules of origin work when AI designs products across borders? How do labor provisions apply when AI performs tasks previously done by workers? How do we prevent AI-enabled circumvention of trade rules while encouraging AI-enabled productivity gains? These questions don’t have obvious answers, but 2026 will force us to start developing them.

Coordination on critical minerals and energy will accelerate. The EV transition is the test case, but the implications extend far beyond vehicles. AI data centers consume enormous power. Semiconductor fabrication requires reliable clean energy. The countries that coordinate energy infrastructure development will lead; those that don’t will depend on those who do. North America has natural advantages here. The question is whether policy enables those advantages or squanders them.

Logistics transformation will continue to reshape cross-border operations. The border itself is becoming a laboratory for AI-human collaboration. Customs brokers, freight forwarders, trade compliance specialists: these professionals are either becoming AI-fluent or falling behind. The firms that figure out human-AI collaboration in logistics will set patterns that spread across every sector. I’ll be watching closely to see which models emerge and which scale.

The Stakes

What I tell my students: you’re not preparing for a future where AI exists. You’re preparing for a future where AI fluency is table stakes. The jobs that remain purely human will be fewer than you expect. The jobs that combine human judgment with AI capability will be more numerous and more valuable than current career guides suggest. Build the skills to thrive in that collaboration, not to compete against it. Learn to ask both questions: “Why not use AI for this?” when seeking productivity, and “Why should AI have autonomy here?” when security matters. Those who master both questions will lead. Those who ask only one will struggle.

What I tell policymakers: you’re not choosing between security and prosperity. That framing is obsolete. You’re choosing whether North America architects both together or lets competitors do it first. The Shared Security, Shared Prosperity framework isn’t a slogan or an aspiration. It’s the operating system the continent needs to compete in an era where economic strength and national security are inextricably linked. Policies that sacrifice one for the other will fail on both dimensions. The November paradox of AI creation and AI destruction should have made this clear to anyone paying attention.

What I tell business leaders: the uncertainty of 2025 cannot become the new normal. Investment requires predictability. Growth requires stability. Workforce development requires knowing what skills will matter in five years. If 2026 doesn’t deliver clarity on trade frameworks, energy policy, and AI governance, capital will flow to regions that offer what North America won’t. That’s not a threat or a prediction. It’s already happening. I’ve watched it happen in conversations across the continent this year. Leaders want to invest here, build here, and hire here. But they need to know the rules won’t change before their facilities open or their training programs are complete.

The year taught me that these threads are inseparable. Trade policy shapes AI deployment. AI capability shapes workforce requirements. Workforce readiness shapes continental competitiveness. Energy infrastructure enables all of the above. Security concerns constrain and channel all of the above. Pull one thread and the whole fabric moves. Policymakers who treat these as separate domains will produce incoherent results. Leaders who recognize the convergence will shape what comes next.

2026 will test whether North American leadership recognizes this convergence. The USMCA review will reveal whether we can think trilaterally about trade. AI governance debates will reveal whether we can coordinate digital infrastructure. Energy transitions will reveal whether we can build continental capacity. Each of these tests arrives in the same year, and each will be shaped by how we approach the others.

I’ll continue working at this intersection: developing policy frameworks, teaching the next generation of professionals, and contributing to public conversations that shape how we move forward. The stakes are too high for anyone who cares about this continent’s future to sit on the sidelines.

The paths are crossing. The question is whether North America crosses them together.

Dr. Daniel Covarrubias is the Director of Texas A&M International University’s A.R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development.