Within the framework of the Brazilian pro tempore presidency of MERCOSUR, the meeting was held in Itamaraty This week, on October 9 and 10, a meeting aimed at resuming negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement between the bloc and Canada, which began in 2018 and were suspended in 2021.
We recall that MERCOSUR includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. According to official sources, it represents a GDP of over US$3 trillion and a population of 282 million. In 2024, merchandise trade between Canada and MERCOSUR reached 15,8 billion Canadian dollars, with Canadian exports totaling 3,1 billion and imports totaling 12,8 billion.
According to Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, "At the meeting, guidelines were defined for continuing negotiations, with the goal of concluding the agreement on balanced and mutually beneficial terms, and of deepening trade relations and productive integration between the MERCOSUR economies and Canada."
Amongst the Topics under discussion include: trade in goods, rules of origin and origin procedures, trade facilitation and customs cooperation, Safeguard measures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, trade in services, cross-border trade in services, financial services, temporary entry, telecommunications, investment, intellectual property, competition policy and public and private market actors, public procurement, inclusive trade, environment, labor, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, trade and gender, e-commerce, as well as horizontal, legal and institutional provisions, including dispute resolution mechanisms, and other topics that will be added as appropriate, according to official sources.
According to sources from the Brazilian Government, this measure reflects the bloc's commitment to move towards modern trade agreements, balanced and mutually beneficial. Along the same lines, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Brazil, headed by Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, stressed that the talks with Canada follow the model of those already concluded with Singapore, the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)), made up of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
The resumption of negotiations with Canada is thus part of a strategy to open and diversify MERCOSUR's trade ties, with a view to strengthening regional competitiveness and expanding access to new markets. In this sense, the key to 2025 is the continued dynamic of MERCOSUR's external relations with various countries and regions around the world, a line of action that Brazil is reinforcing during its pro tempore presidency in the second half of 2025.
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