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OTTAWA — Officials from Canada, the United States and Mexico are meeting virtually on Wednesday to discuss the future of their trilateral trade deal, as Prime Minister Mark Carney signals he’s not anticipating any resolution, and U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to opt against extending the agreement.

Wednesday is the deadline for officials in all three countries to say whether they want to renew the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) for a 16-year period. If any member chooses not to rubberstamp it, an annual review process kicks in for the next decade.

Representing Canada in the meeting are Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Canada’s chief negotiator Janice Charette. Both have tried to assuage concerns about Wednesday’s deadline by repeatedly assuring that it’s “not a cliff.”

On Tuesday, Carney downplayed expectations for the meeting, telling reporters in Kuujjuaq, Que. that he’s “expecting a constructive exchange,” but adding he “wouldn’t expect any drama,” and he’s “not looking for (his) pen.”

In his message to Canadians on Canada Day — amid an ongoing trade war with the United States — Carney wrote: “Small acts of solidarity, repeated millions of times, proving that together we can give ourselves far more than anyone could ever take away.

Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly slammed the agreement, inked during his first term in the White House. Whether the U.S. administration plans to extend it, however, is unclear.

Following the G7 Leaders’ Summit in France earlier this month, Trump said he would rather leave CUSMA unsigned and have it immediately terminated, though he also signalled he may sign the deal.

Speaking at a digital event hosted by BMO earlier this week, Canada’s former chief CUSMA negotiator Steve Verheul said while there’s “a possibility for it to come together,” he expects negotiations to continue beyond the U.S. midterm elections in the fall, and possibly into next year.

“We’re looking at a very different kind of discussion than we had in President Trump’s first term,” Verheul said. “At that point we were trying to negotiate 34 chapters of an agreement, and that was a very different kind of scenario than we’re looking at now.”

“Now we’re looking at pursuing a number of bilateral irritants that the U.S. is trying to reach some kind of accommodation on,” he added. “And there’s a handful of trilateral issues that are also under consideration, but most of, if not all of, the agreement is going to remain as it is now.”

Any of the three countries are also able to pull out of the deal entirely with six months’ notice. Despite Trump’s previous comments that he would prefer CUSMA not exist at all, saying he thinks the United States is better off without it, neither he nor his deputies have given any indication that they want to terminate it.

Speaking during a fireside chat at the Hudson Institute — a Washington, D.C.-based think tank — in April, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer compared certain provisions within CUSMA to “load-bearing pillars,” which currently function well within the agreement, and that the United States doesn’t want to change or get rid of.

“There are certainly things in there that are valuable, but we do have to have some kind of a protocol, or something with Mexico and one with Canada separately, I think, to deal with issues specific to those countries,” Greer said at the time.

Amid talks around the future of CUSMA, Canada and the U.S. remain in a trade war that’s nearly at the 18-month mark, after Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports last February. While the vast majority of Canadian goods are exempt from the levies because they’re covered under CUSMA, a slate of sectoral tariffs remain in place.

With files from CTV News’ Rachel Aiello and Abigail Bimman