Canada’s minister of international trade said on Friday that Ottawa is aiming to complete a free-trade agreement with South America’s Mercosur bloc by the autumn, and that negotiation schedules will be tightened to help meet that target.
Speaking on the sidelines of a World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, the minister said the plan is to increase the frequency of formal negotiation sessions to roughly every six weeks. “We’re stepping up the negotiation timelines a little bit. Hopefully we can have negotiations every six weeks or so, and hopefully we can get it done by the fall. That is the goal we’ve set between our partners,” he said.
He reported holding bilateral meetings with Argentina and Paraguay, and said he would meet with representatives from Brazil and Uruguay later on Friday at the WTO gathering. Officials told him the proposed Mercosur-Canada trade agreement would figure in those conversations.
In private exchanges with other officials, an Argentine government official indicated the pact could be signed in September or October, roughly a year after negotiations formally resumed. Separately, a diplomat based in Brazil described the talks as progressing at record speed and said they were going extremely well, adding that a deal this year was likely.
The minister framed Canada’s push as part of a broader effort to diversify trade ties amid uncertainty tied to tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. A diplomat based in Brazil noted that South America, and Brazil in particular, remains a trade partner Canada cannot afford to lose.
As negotiations accelerate, Ottawa’s schedule of frequent roundtable sessions and continued bilateral meetings with Mercosur members will determine whether the autumn timeline can be met. For now, officials and diplomats involved in the process have expressed optimism while setting an internal goal for completion by the fall.