The Vice-President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute is confident a new trilateral North American trade agreement will help bolster investor confidence in Canada.
Canada, the United States and Mexico have successfully concluded negotiations aimed at creating a United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.
Colin Robertson, the Vice-President and a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, says from Canada and Mexico’s perspective it ensures preferred access to the largest market in the world and, for the United States, it illustrates to the world that, even with Donald Trump as President, they actually can do trade deals.
From a Canadian and Mexican perspective, it lifts the uncertainty about investment in Canada both by Canadians and by foreigners who look at Canada as an attractive destination. We’ve got a highly educated work force, we have energy, we’ve got capacity but if we don’t have access to the biggest market in the world they begin to think, why do we not we situate in the United States instead of in Canada.
But I think now that Canada has maintained and preserved its access to the United States as well as now having better access to the Pacific because of our membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership and to Europe through the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement that puts Canada in, I think, a quite enviable position.
Importantly for North America it once again means that North America can operate as a kind of platform, particularly in manufacturing. And we’ve made improvements. There are chapters now on the environment and labour and that introduces a kind of progressive element. And we’ve added a chapter on digital commerce, something that was in both the European and the Pacific agreements but was missing from the former NAFTA.
~ Colin Robertson, Canadian Global Affairs Institute
Robertson notes the USMCA will run for a minimum of six years and it can be renewed twice so it can go to 18 years with revisions as we go along which provides and added measure of stability.
