The federal government announced public consultations on the agreements in a Dec. 13 news release. Consultations close on Jan. 26.

The agreements under negotiation are:

• Canada-India comprehensive economic partnership agreement
• Canada-United Arab Emirates comprehensive economic partnership agreement
• Canada-Thailand free trade agreement
• Canada-Mercosur free trade agreement

India is Canada’s seventh-largest trading partner for goods and services, though that trade relationship has been strained in recent years.

This year, India imposed a 30 per cent tariff on all imports of yellow peas.

The federal government and Canadian exporters have been working to expand trade with the Asia-Pacific region. Thailand was the third-largest economy in that region in 2024, the federal government said.

The Mercosur bloc, which comprises Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, represented the eighth-largest economy in the world in 2024, the federal government said.

The government specifically asked for comments on issues including:

• Goods for export or import that would benefit from removal of trade barriers
• Import sensitivities
• Non-tariff barriers, technical barriers to trade and sanitary or phytosanitary measures to consider
• Promotion of environmental protections
• Promotion of labour rights or other human rights

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The EU and Canada have benefited from a free trade agreement since 2017, which has boosted bilateral trade by 65 per cent, and set up a raw materials partnership in 2021.

Ng met EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic for a lunch on Saturday following a meeting with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director general of the World Trade Organization in Geneva on Friday.

“Trade agreements are one thing, and we have seen really great numbers, but what more can we be doing to help Canadian businesses enter into any of the 27 member states…and what more can we do to the same in Canada” Ng said.

She said critical minerals and smaller businesses would be among the focus areas with the EU. The EU, in particular, is keen to forge partnerships to secure metals that are key for the energy transition – cobalt, lithium and nickel – to reduce its dependence on China.

Canada is also pushing to diversify its exports and set itself a target in 2018 of increasing non-U.S. exports by 50 per cent by 2025. Ng said the country was on track to meet or exceed the target.

Canada struck trade deals with Indonesia in December and Ecuador last week and is pushing hard in the Indo-Pacific region. The minister is leading a delegation including more than 200 businesses to Australia, Singapore and Brunei next week.

“We are at the table with the countries in Southeast Asia, so the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. I took a very large delegation of Canadian businesses to the Philippines in December, to Indonesia, to markets like Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Korea,” Ng added.

Ottawa threatened retaliatory duties and legal action against the United States after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico a week ago and before he paused their imposition for 30 days. Ng said Canada could challenge Washington at the WTO if tariffs were imposed.

“We would consider all of the options are available to Canada because Canada is a country that believes in a rules-based trading system,” Ng said.

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The agreement was reached after 25 years of negotiations, in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, that were attended by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the leaders of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, the four member states of the South American bloc.

The deal still faces a lengthy process to be ratified and go into effect, which could take years. It could get blocked with France a staunch opponent, in part over fears of increased South American farm goods arriving in Europe.

“Any market opening is favorable, I think it’s an opportunity, but you have to look at the fine print, what the conditions are,” Carlos Castagnani, president of the Argentine Rural Confederations, told Reuters.

“We have to ensure that our way of producing is respected.”

Argentina is the world’s top exporter of processed soy, the no. 3 for corn, and a key supplier of wheat and beef.

South American farmers and exporters are keen to have greater access to the huge European market. However, fears that environmental clauses will limit trade and opposition from some EU countries to the agreement have dampened expectations.

Among the European demands are limits on the use of genetically modified seeds and deforestation, which have been common practices in South America in recent decades.

Argentina’s grain exporters and processors’ chamber CIARA-CEC said that while the agreement was a positive step for the bloc, its real impact would not be immediate.

Products such as oil or biodiesel, will only see significant tariff reductions starting in seven to ten years, CIARA-CEC president Gustavo Idigoras told Reuters.

Argentina was over a decade ago the world’s largest supplier of biodiesel, but was hit badly by European tariffs and other protectionist measures.

The agreement is important for South America’s producers to stay competitive, with major economies around the world threatening protectionist policies, said Pedro Galli, member of the Rural Association of Paraguay, a key soybean exporter.

However, Hector Cristaldo, president of the Union of Production Guilds, the main association of Paraguayan soybean producers, called for calm as the final text gets finalised and emphasized the complexity of the process that awaits the deal.

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“This landmark agreement represents a significant opportunity for Canada’s meat industry to expand its presence in one of the largest and fastest-growing markets in the Indo-Pacific region,” the council said in a statement on Monday.

Indonesia and Canada signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on Dec. 2, three years after negotiations began. The agreement will take effect in 2026 and was signed in Jakarta by trade ministers of both countries.

In a joint statement on Monday, the two countries said the agreement, “addresses rules and market access for goods, services, investment, financial services, and temporary movement of natural persons and includes provisions on intellectual property rights, good regulatory practices, e-commerce, competition, government procurement, small and medium-sized enterprises, women’s economic empowerment, environment, and labour.”

The countries also agreed to cooperate on critical minerals, sanitary and phytosanitary measures. Canada committed to providing technical assistance to facilitate the new agreement.

The Canadian Meat Council praised the “robust” sanitary and phytosanitary chapter, which it said will be enforced in such a way as to prevent it from becoming a non-tariff trade barrier.

“It will be essential to ensure that market access requirements, including halal certifications, and industry food safety audits are addressed promptly to facilitate commercially viable access,” the council said.

Cereals Canada was also bullish about the new deal, calling it a “significant milestone for Canada’s agriculture and food sector,” in a statement today.

“With our long history of supplying wheat and durum to Indonesian millers, Cereals Canada was supportive of the negotiations toward an agreement,” said Cereals Canada CEO Dean Dias. “We expect this new agreement to set the stage for future growth and cooperation. The Canadian cereals sector looks forward to continuing our strong ties with Indonesia.”

Cereals Canada highlighted the agreement’s “comprehensive provision on agricultural biotechnology,” and broad tariff elimination for Canadian agricultural exports.

Two-way trade between Indonesia and Canada was $3.4 billion last year, according to with Indonesia’s trade ministry. Canada has estimated bilateral trade at $5.1 billion in 2023.

Canada’s main exports to Indonesia were cereals, oilseeds, wood pulp, fertilizers and machinery, the Government of Canada’s website said. Indonesia mainly exported machinery and electrical machinery as well as garments and footwear.

Indonesia is Canada’s second-largest buyer of non-durum wheat, Cereals Canada said, with 2.4 million tonnes bought in 2023.

Under CEPA, Indonesia will see liberalization of 90.5 per cent of the total tariffs for goods entering Canada with a trade value of $1.4 billion (C$1.97 billion).

Canada’s international trade minister, Mary Ng said the country’s cattle industry was also represented on the Jakarta visit and looking to play a part in Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s signature program to provide free school meals from next year.

Asked about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods, Ng told Reuters: “We need to work with the Americans and we’re committed to doing that and that work will certainly continue”.

“The good news here is that Canada and Indonesia in the negotiating of this trade agreement means that we are creating a predictability of our trading relationship, bringing down tariffs,” she added.

—With files from Reuters

—Updated Dec. 4 to include quotes, details from Cereals Canada, updates headline.

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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reached the deal in Washington on Friday, with Tokyo cutting tariffs on U.S. beef but Washington maintaining tariffs on Japanese autos, Nikkei said.

The newspaper did not cite any sources for its information.

The results of the Lighthizer-Motegi talks will be announced at a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expected on Sunday on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, the Nikkei said.

The report came shortly after Motegi told reporters in Washington that he and Lighthizer had made “big progress.”

Motegi said the three-day talks that ended on Friday would probably be the last ministerial-level discussions and working-level officials would continue to hammer out on details.

Japan will cut its tariffs on U.S. beef and pork to the levels applied to members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the Nikkei said. Trump pulled America out of the TPP, which had been championed by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The United States will not cut the 2.5 per cent tariff it applies on Japanese autos for now but separate talks on those would continue, the Nikkei reported. It said Washington was “moving in the direction” of scrapping tariffs on some of the 400 types of Japanese car parts that Tokyo is seeking.

Trump and Abe may sign the pact in late September if they can reach a final deal, the Nikkei said. They were expected to meet then on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“I think how we proceed the talks from now on, and the time schedule, will be announced at the summit meeting scheduled in Biarritz,” Motegi said.

He said Abe and Trump would confirm the progress that was made at the ministerial meetings and decide how to proceed.

“We have been making efforts to narrow gaps,” Motegi said.

“We negotiated to protect Japan’s position, our position on agriculture,” he said.

Japanese officials had previously said Tokyo could cut tariffs to TPP levels but no further.

Motegi and Lighthizer initially planned two days of talks but negotiations extended to a third day on Friday in an effort to narrow differences on areas such as agriculture and automobiles.

Trump is unhappy with Tokyo’s large trade surplus and he could pile pressure on Japan to curb its auto exports to the United States and open its highly protected agriculture market to fix what he calls unfair trade imbalances.

Motegi declined to comment on details but said the negotiations were based on the two nations’ joint statement in September.

Trump will talk to his counterparts during his visit to France about how to open up their markets to ensure U.S. businesses have avenues to sell goods and services.

The United States and China are also engaged in an expensive trade dispute that has disrupted financial markets worldwide.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kaori Kaneko in Tokyo, David Lawder, Andrea Shalal and Jonas Ekblom in Washington and Chizu Nomiyama in New York.

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One of the biggest fallacies people fall into is the ‘recency effect,’ when the events of the near past are assumed to be more important than earlier events. Informally, it’s become shorthand for the assumption that the future will continue on like recent memory.

People make purchasing decisions based on the premise that interest rates will always stay low because they’ve been low for 20 years, for example — ignoring completely that rather unpleasant interlude in the 1970s and ’80s. Or house prices will always go up — until they don’t — as U.S. citizens found out, to their chagrin, just a few years ago.

One of the strongest examples of this thinking in the modern world is around trade. There’s the rather strong assumption now that we’re always going to see more trade and that anything that upsets that apple cart is nothing but a brief unpleasant interlude, a mere growing pain on the path towards greater prosperity.

That’s understandable, given this is the direction the winds have been blowing for decades now. Postwar Europe pursued its union, first in an effort to ensure there would be no more total wars on that continent, but ultimately for economic good and growth.

In North America, CUSTA, then NAFTA and the yet-to-be ratified USMCA agreements have opened up trade on this continent as never before.

Globally, the somewhat mushy and ineffectual General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) of 1948 morphed into the World Trade Organization in the mid-1990s, becoming the largest economic organization in the world.

A global consensus emerged that trade is good, and that more trade was the inexorable fate of the global economy.

Lately however, that’s under attack on two fronts. There’s the political reaction in western democracies from those that feel they’ve been ignored, marginalized and left behind by this shiny new paradigm.

That’s been evident in the election of President Donald Trump in the U.S. and the Brexit vote that has the United Kingdom poised to pull out of the European Union, deal or no deal. In other jurisdictions we’ve also all observed the restive nature of the electorate as they punish incumbents and reward perceived outsiders.

The second front on this war is from the newly emboldened economic tigers, and in particular from China. It’s never been entirely clear that China endorses or particularly believes in this western neo-liberal trade model. Its leaders might use it when it’s to their own advantage, but their own economy remains a maze of policies and controls.

Especially troubling for Canadian farmers is how the two now seem to be combining in ways that will spin off effects that hit them at the farm gate.

Trump’s trade brinksmanship resulted in tit-for-tat tariffs that hit U.S. soybean growers hard, but benefited their counterparts in places like Latin America. But now that the two economic giants are making nice again, that could spell trouble for everyone else. Canola growers, for example, should be concerned about rumblings that any trade deal between the two could include minimum annual purchases of U.S. soybeans.

It’s a challenging picture for any middle-size country like Canada, especially one so trade dependent, as our Allan Dawson reports in our latest issue of the Manitoba Co-operator. Perhaps agriculture economist Al Mussell put it best when he noted that, absent the sort of leverage China or the U.S. enjoy, Canada is forced to rely on rules-based trade.

But that reliance, he and colleagues Douglas Hedley and Ted Bilyea concede in a paper he authored for Agri-Food Economic Systems ominously titled Disarray in Agricultural Markets, may not play out in the near term.

The paper concedes that right now much of world agriculture trade is dependent on geopolitics and that means “… the bounds or equilibrium that the market is moving toward is unclear. It is uncharted territory.”

It’s clear that food will continue to be traded internationally in the coming years. What’s less clear is how that trade will occur and how reliable it will be.

For Canada, with its plan to grow agricultural and food exports exponentially, the challenge won’t be producing the goods. Farmers have demonstrated they’re more than capable.

It will be putting the right resources into the right places to get them to customers in other parts of the world.

Without that concerted effort we’ll be sitting here, wishing for the “good old days.”

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Jim Carr, minister of international trade diversification, has invited ministers from around the world who are committed to the multilateral trading system, said Allison Lewis, a spokeswoman for Global Affairs Canada.

“Canada is concerned about the future of the WTO as a linchpin of the global rules-based order,” she said in an email. “We recognize the WTO is facing a number of systemic challenges. The objective of the meeting is to identify concrete and tangible ways the operation and functioning of the WTO could be enhanced and improved over the short, medium and long term.”

The October meeting is intended to launch the global discussion on updating the WTO. The invitees do not include the U.S. or China, which are locked in an escalating tariff battle.

“The initial group of ministers is deliberately small to ensure that there is ample room and time to have a meaningful and interactive conversation,” she said. “Representation in the group is diverse both with respect to geographic representation and levels of development.

“It is Canada’s intention to proceed transparently and to ensure that all WTO members are aware of our work,” she said. Canada has been speaking to various countries to outline the objectives for the ministerial.”

The meeting got a boost when Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, convinced the Trump administration during his recent visit to Washington to discuss trade matters to agree to work with “like-minded partners” to reform the WTO.

The U.S. has been widely criticized for ignoring WTO decisions, flouting its tariff rules and blocking the appointment of new arbiters for trade dispute appeals, which undermines the organization’s power to mediate trade squabbles.

The Canadian initiative came after the U.S. launched separate trade complaints with the WTO against Canada, China, the European Union, Mexico and Turkey over retaliatory tariffs they imposed after the U.S. hit them with stiff steel and aluminum tariffs. Trade experts called the American complaints to the WTO “as the height of gall.” The administration claims the U.S. tariffs are legal but retaliating against them isn’t.

Some saw the American action as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine international bodies such as NATO and the WTO. It’s expected resolution of the American claims could take several years at least.

The WTO is an international body that adjudicates trade disagreements between member nations. While they usually adhere to WTO rulings, the process can be so slow and cumbersome as was the Canadian campaign to end the American country-of-origin labelling on Canadian beef and pork.

While it succeeded, the livestock industry suffered billions of dollars in losses.

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Federal, provincial and territorial ministers on Friday announced they’ve concluded talks on a new Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), which on July 1 will replace the current Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) that’s been in place since 1995.

Ministers on Friday noted the new deal takes a “negative list” approach to trade, in which the deal declares all trade barriers across all sectors of economic activity to be lifted unless specifically identified as an exception.

The CFTA will also automatically apply to goods and services in “new and emerging” sectors, an aspect that’s expected to remove regulatory uncertainty.

According to an Ontario government release Friday, the deal makes Canada the first country in the world to have a binding process to harmonize or mutually recognize existing regulations affecting trade.

The CFTA is also meant to align domestic trade rules with international trade agreements, such as the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), providing guarantees that Canadian businesses get no less favourable treatment than EU suppliers will have in Canada under CETA.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, for one, “is pleased that the agreement is structured to facilitate the flow of goods using an over-arching non-discrimination principle,” president Ron Bonnett said in a separate release Friday.

“This will ensure that technical aspects don’t create unnecessary barriers to trade within our own borders.”

The CFA on Friday noted several areas in which farmers face difficulties in interprovincial trade, such as trucking transportation regulations and differing requirements between federally- and provincially-regulated meat processing plants.

The group said it also awaits more detail about a new Regulatory Reconciliation and Co-operation Table, which is to be set up within a year from July 1 to co-ordinate processes for resolving specific trade barriers that provinces and territories identify.

Participating ministers used the “illustrative example” of gasoline and diesel fuel blending requirements, which vary between provinces.

Governments that don’t regulate fuel blending or don’t want to take part in a reconciliation agreement would not take part in the process, while governments that do take part would come to an agreement to harmonize their requirements.

“We see the regulatory reconciliation process within the new agreement as a very important mechanism to assist in our efforts to access markets across Canada as cost-efficiently as possible,” Rodney Dingwell, chair of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board, said in the P.E.I. government’s release.

The reconciliation process, he said, is expected to “help resolve barriers to trade in the food industry when we encounter them.”

Canada today imports over $47 billion in food, “much of which is meat, grains and vegetables that Canadian farmers also produce right here at home,” Dan Mazier, president of Manitoba farm group Keystone Agricultural Producers, said in the Manitoba government’s release Friday.

“Interprovincial trade barriers have too often made it easier for processors and retailers to import food from another country, than from another province,” he said, noting “time and time again Canadians have made it clear they want to be eating Canadian-produced food.”

The CFTA’s timeline beyond July 1 commits partner governments to set up a working group within a year, to recommend “initiatives to further enhance trade in wine, beer and spirits within Canada.”

The deal also calls for the federal and three territorial governments to set up a working group within six months from July 1 to look at “options for economic development and initiatives in the territories’ food sector.”

Within a year from July 1, a working group would also set out recommendations to the “to address the challenges associated with producing healthy food and to mitigate the high costs of food for residents of the territories.”

Overall, “companies will find it easier and less costly to sell their goods and services across the country, which means Canadians can expect more choice and pay less for what they buy,” Navdeep Bains, the federal minister for economic development, said in a separate statement. — AGCanada.com Network

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“We’re working hard for it to be the year when CETA, the Canada-EU trade agreement, is signed. We’re working towards signing in October and ratification early next year,” she told the Toronto Global Forum.

“At a time when so much of the world is saying no to trade and saying no to the global economy, Canada is in a position to say yes,” Freeland said.

Supporters of the deal, called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), say it would increase trade between the EU and Canada on a range of products, boosting the EU economy by 12 billion euros (C$17.6 billion).

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde told the conference that the agreement had been viewed positively at the recent G20 Summit in China.

“There were some very favourable views expressed on both sides to support the Canada and Europe trade deal, so let’s hope that that one can be put to bed,” she said.

However, it faces opposition from Austria and anti-globalization groups and risks being caught up in a growing public backlash in the West against free trade and globalization, which critics blame for factory closures, depressed wages and a widening gap between rich and poor.

“When you think about this protectionist environment, if we can get CETA done that will be incredibly valuable for Canada, a huge competitive advantage, and also it will be a very powerful message to the world,” Freeland said.

— Matt Scuffham is a finance sector correspondent for Reuters in Toronto.

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Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo and Indonesian Trade Minister Thomas Trikasih Lembong said in a joint statement talks would resume in May after a lengthy hiatus spanning a period of diplomatic tumult.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited Indonesia last year in the hope of smoothing over ties strained by rows over spying, the execution of Australian citizens in Indonesia and Australia’s tough asylum-seeker policies.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy but is Australia’s twelfth largest trading partner, with two-way trade worth just under A$12 billion (C$11.9 billion)in 2015.

“While Indonesia is a close neighbour and firm friend, our trade and economic relationship can and should be performing better,” Ciobo said in a statement.

“I am pleased to announce the reactivation of the Indonesia-Australia Business Partnership Group to ramp up business links.”

Australia’s live cattle exports to Indonesia have been a source of friction as Indonesia, trying to develop self-sufficiency in its livestock market, has thrown up barriers to Australian imports.

Lembong suggested that the live cattle export issue may be put aside in the hope of reaching a broader agreement more quickly.

“Sometimes maybe we need to call time out on the most contentious issues and work on areas where we can more easily find common ground,” he told reporters in Canberra.

“Personally, my priority is to try to broaden the dialogue so we don’t get bogged down on old issues of contention.”

Canada’s main agrifood exports to Indonesia are in non-durum wheat, alone worth over $428 million in 2014. Cereal crops alone made up over 32 per cent of Canada’s exports to Indonesia in 2015.

Australia and Indonesia have a history of diplomatic turbulence stretching back decades, but relations reached historic lows under former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was ousted in a party coup in September.

Just one month after he took office in September 2013, revelations that Canberra had spied on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife sent relations plummeting.

Abbott’s policy of towing back to Indonesia vessels carrying asylum seekers, while popular at home, infuriated Jakarta, which sees it as an infringement on its sovereignty.

Tension reached a peak in May 2015 when Indonesia executed two Australian members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug trafficking ring, despite intense lobbying from Canberra.

— Matt Siegel is Reuters’ senior political correspondent in Sydney, Australia.

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