OTTAWA \u2014 As American officials consider cutting separate deals with both countries, Mexico says Canada is a core partner in the continental trade pact known as CUSMA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mexican government is very clear that Canada\u2019s participation in our trade agreement is fundamental,\u201d Luis Rosendo Gutierrez Romano, Mexico\u2019s vice-minister of trade, said in Spanish.<\/p>\n
He spoke Thursday at a news conference announcing a Mexican trade mission to Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto from May 7 to May 9. The trade mission follows a Canadian one to Mexico last month led by Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc.<\/p>\n
The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, or CUSMA, has shielded Canada and Mexico from the worst impacts of American tariffs, such as the worldwide 10 per cent duty on goods.<\/p>\n
But the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has spread uncertainty about the pact\u2019s future ahead of a mandatory CUSMA review taking place this year.<\/p>\n
Trump has mused about quitting the agreement negotiated during his first administration, calling it \u201cirrelevant\u201d and saying it may have served its purpose. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has talked about negotiating separate bilateral trade pacts with America\u2019s closest neighbours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see it optimistically, that we will reach July 1 with a very strong, trilateral relationship and with a stronger agreement in terms of trade, but also improvements \u2026 in procedures to do a lot more efficiently,\u201d Gutierrez Romano said in Spanish.<\/p>\n
The CUSMA review sets up a three-way choice for each country to make in July. They can renew the deal for another 16 years, withdraw from it or signal both non-renewal and non-withdrawal \u2014 which would trigger an annual review that could keep negotiations going for up to a decade.<\/p>\n
Some have suggested that the contentious Canada-U.S. relationship could mean the United States and Mexico begin CUSMA negotiations with Canada on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
Something similar happened during the original CUSMA negotiations to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement during Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
Robert Lighthizer, Trump\u2019s trade representative at the time, recalled in his book that the United States and Mexico came to an agreement and \u201cCanada was welcome to join if it wanted,\u201d but Washington and Mexico City were \u201cprepared to move forward bilaterally if it did not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, an agreement was reached that was hailed a success in all three countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 As American officials consider cutting separate deals with both countries, Mexico says Canada is a core…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-532485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}