Canada and US reach free trade deal with Mexico
The agreement will result in freer markets and fairer trade, a statement said.
Canada and the United States reached a deal on Sunday night for Canada to stay in a free trade pact with the US and Mexico.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the deal in a joint statement late on Sunday.
They say the newly-named United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, will result in freer markets and fairer trade.
The agreement preserved a North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) dispute-resolution process that the US wanted to jettison, an official said.
The agreement also exempts tariffs on 2.6 million cars. On dairy, the official said Canada essentially gave the US the same access it offered in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement that president Donald Trump rejected.
“It’s a good day for Canada,” the country’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said as he left his office. He said he would have more to say on Monday.
“It is a good night for Mexico, and for North America,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray tweeted.
“It will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home.”
The US and Canada were under pressure to reach a deal by midnight on Sunday.
Canada, the United States’ No. 2 trading partner, was left out when the US and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the Nafta.
The Trump administration officially notified Congress of the US-Mexico trade agreement on August 31. That started a 90-day clock that would let outgoing Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto sign the new pact before he leaves office on December 1.
Mexico’s economics ministry said in a tweet earlier on Sunday that the text of the pact would be delivered to the Mexican Senate on Sunday night, adding that “if there is agreement with Canada, the text will be trilateral. If there is not, it will be bilateral”.
US-Canada talks stalled earlier this month, and most trade analysts expected the September 30 deadline to come and go without Canada being reinstated.
