The past few years have seen an upsurge in populist politics around the globe. Yet, its potential impact on the liberal international order has been analyzed mainly from a discursive perspective, and much less is known about actual policy implications. Adopting an ideational approach to populism and taking the case of the NAFTA renegotiation process as a building block in the liberal economic order, this article studies the populist imprints of the revised agreement. First, we demonstrate how the populist division of society between ‘the corrupt elite’ and ‘the honest people’ and the emphasis on popular sovereignty were used as narrative frames in criticizing NAFTA. In a second step, through selected provisions, we show how alterations to NAFTA are considered as ‘populist corrections’ to guarantee greater representation for ‘the people’ and better safeguards for popular sovereignty under the USMCA. The article concludes with a discussion of potential implications for global trade.

在过去的几年中，全球民粹主义政治激增。但是，它主要从话语角度分析了它对国际自由秩序的潜在影响，而对实际政策含义的了解还很少。本文采用民粹主义的思想方法，并以北美自由贸易协定的重新谈判过程为基础，作为自由经济秩序的基石，本文研究了修订后的协议的民粹烙印。首先，我们证明了“腐败的精英”和“诚实的人民”之间的民粹主义社会划分以及对大众主权的强调被用作批评北美自由贸易协定的叙事框架。在第二步中，通过选定的规定，我们展示了如何将NAFTA的变更视为“民粹主义更正”，以确保USMCA赋予“人民”更大的代表权和更好的维护民众主权的保障。本文最后讨论了对全球贸易的潜在影响。