Canada has made a last-minute agreement to join the US and Mexico in a new deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), allowing outgoing Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto to sign the accord on his final day in office.
The agreement comes after a flurry of phone calls between negotiators for all three nations over the weekend, although one of Donald Trump’s closest White House trade advisers, Peter Navarro, told the Washington Post that there are “several sticking points” remaining in the “broad agreement”.
The new deal will be known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), CNBC reports, with the full text of the agreement due to be made public in the next 24 hours.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The deal, however, is far from complete, with a number of significant hurdles for the USMCA to clear before it goes into effect.
The race to have all three nations sign up to the agreement was rushed in order to get Pena’s signature on the document before left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took power in Mexico to try to make changes.
The USMCA also faces an uncertain future as it will need to be ratified by a US Congress in 2019 which could be drastically re-shaped by November’s midterm elections.
Further complicating matters are several sections of the agreement which could prove politically unpopular for Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who is facing his own federal election in 2019.
-
The 5 best TV shows about the mobThe Week Recommends From the show that launched TV’s golden age to a Batman spin-off, viewers can’t get enough of these magnificent mobsters
-
Is the US in recession?Today's Big Question ‘Unofficial signals’ are flashing red
-
Dinosaurs were thriving before asteroid, study findsSpeed Read The dinosaurs would not have gone extinct if not for the asteroid
-
Experts discover why dogs wag their tailsTall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
'Angel' visits woman before lottery winTall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
Doomsday group offers 'epic' survival opportunityTall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
Why journalist deaths continue to rise around the worldUnder the Radar Journalist deaths rose sharply in 2022 and don't appear to be slowing down this year
-
Mexican mayor marries a crocodilefeature And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
What we know about the Titan sub’s likely implosionfeature Experts say the five passengers would have died ‘instantaneously’ following ‘catastrophic’ loss of pressure
-
What happened to the missing Titanic sub?Today's Big Question Oxygen supplies running out after vessel lost contact during ‘daredevil’ trip
-
Man arrested after shooting himself in the legfeature And other stories from the stranger side of life
