Asia Pacific nations including China, Japan and South Korea on Sunday signed the world’s largest regional free trade agreement, encompassing nearly a third of the world’s population and gross domestic product.
Taiwan's main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) began a push on Sunday for a referendum to block the easing of restrictions on US pork imports, which if passed could threaten a long-mooted free trade deal with Taipei's key ally Washington.
The UK and South Korea have signed an in principle free trade agreement (FTA) that seeks to maintain existing trade arrangements post-Brexit. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox signed the deal with his South Korean counterpart Yoo Myung-hee in Seoul.
The EU free-trade deals that the UK government has managed to roll over are incomplete, say trade experts. The UK Trade Policy Observatory told Newsnight the deals cannot guarantee trade will continue for British companies in a no-deal Brexit.
Chile and Brazil signed a free trade agreement on Wednesday that scraps red tape and tariffs between the two South American economies, in a move both governments said would give a boost to regional integration.
US President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he had refused to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, accusing Canada of treating the United States very badly.
The Brazilian Real led losses in Latin America as lingering concerns over presidential elections overshadowed a largely positive environment for emerging market assets. The US dollar ended trading at 4.333 Reales.
A huge political fight has erupted in the UK government over Brexit, Britain’s controversial decision to break away from the European Union, and it could bring down Prime Minister Theresa May. In the last 24 hours, three members of May's cabinet — Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, Brexit Minister David Davis, and the minister for the Department for Exiting the EU, Steve Baker — quit the government in protest over May’s handling of negotiations with the European Union.
The plenary of the leftist coalition Broad Front concluded on Sunday with a motion that postergates de decision over the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Chile, defining to leave the decision on whether or not to support the agreement, delaying the debate to a future plenary whose date is not yet defined. The decision was voted after counting an erroneous sum of the votes in the first instance in which the motion to debate the issue in the plenary had won. However, the votes of the Communist Party of Uruguay (PCU) had been put on the wrong side.
The European Union and Mercosur have made some progress on how to open their markets to cars, but ended free trade talks in Brussels on Friday with finger-pointing about who was holding up a deal. The EU and the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay began on-off negotiations towards a trade alliance in 1999, with a fresh impetus since 2016.