Canada has filed an expansive complaint with the World Trade Organization accusing the US of breaking international trade rules. The complaint challenges the ways that the US investigates products for subsidies and below-cost sales. As expected the US called the claims unfounded.
United States, Canada and Mexico on Wednesday in Ottawa held their first summit after years of aloofness and held themselves up as an example against growing protectionist tendencies around the world.
US President Barack Obama joined the Mexican and Canadian leaders Wednesday for a North American summit focused on trade but marked by friction between the three amigos. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto shook hands with Obama in an ornate state government palace in Toluca, near Mexico City, for private one-on-one talks before Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined them later.
The President Barack Obama administration is “exploring” a regional trade plan for the Americas that would be the most ambitious hemispheric initiative in years, but contrary to the failed experience of George Bush's FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), this time it would be instrumented through Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement) partners Mexico and Canada, according to a Miami Herald interview of Andres Oppenheimer with Secretary of State John Kerry.
The newly-formed Pacific Alliance bloc seems more like a political club to counterbalance the Atlantic-facing, Brazil-led Mercosur group. However, the bloc accounts for 30% of India’s trade with Latin America. Can India engage the group so it is not left out from their Asia focus?