The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will replace NAFTA in the relations between the US and Canada, BBC reported.
The rejigged pact will substantially boost American access to Canada’s dairy market and protect Canada’s auto industry from possible US tariffs. Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau’s negotiators spent two days talking by phone as they tried to settle a range of issues. The US leader has long sought to change Nafta, which governed more than $1tn in trade.
US trade representative Robert Lighthizer and White House adviser Jared Kushner had been keeping Trump updated through the weekend, according to a source, who was not authorized to speak about the talks publicly. The US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a joint statement that:
“Today, Canada and the United States reached an agreement, alongside Mexico, on a new, modernized trade agreement for the 21st Century: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.”
Earlier, the US business groups had opposed turning Nafta into a bilateral deal because the three nations’ economies have become closely intertwined since the pact came into force in 1994. A protectionist policy under Trump’s presidency has seen the US forge ahead with individual trade deals, rejecting bigger multi-lateral trade agreements and posing a challenge to decades of global free trade.
The experts call USMCA ‘a relief’, This deal has been 13 months in the making, and there were times when it seemed like the finish line might never be reached.
