After almost 14 months of tough bargaining, Canada and the United States have settled their trade differences and reached an agreement on a new North American free trade agreement. This one won't be called NAFTA, however.
The trilateral deal will now be known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The new name seems to be a nod to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said he didn't like the name NAFTA.
The federal cabinet met at 10 p.m. Sunday for about an hour to discuss the agreement and, after it ended, the prime minister said it was “a good day for Canada” as he left the building. He said he'd have more to say on Monday.
Officials from the Prime Minister's Office said there will be another cabinet meeting in the morning and likely a news conference, too.
A joint statement was released by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
“Today, Canada and the United States reached an agreement, alongside Mexico, on a new, modernized trade agreement for the 21st Century: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA),” it stated.
“USMCA will give our workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses a high-standard trade agreement that will result in freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth in our region. It will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home.”
The two lead negotiators added: “We look forward to further deepening our close economic ties when this new agreement enters into force.”
They thanked their Mexican counterpart, Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo, for his work on the deal.
On Twitter, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said “a good NAFTA deal is critical to Canada's economy.”
“Millions of Canadian jobs rely on having free trade with the U.S. and Mexico. We will take a close look at the agreement's provisions as soon as they're available to evaluate the deal Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have signed.”
Perrin Beatty, the president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said that with a deal like this, it's important to see all the elements, but details are still scarce.
“However, if the broad lines are as reported, @cafreeland and the Canadian negotiating team have managed to preserve the most important elements of #NAFTA under very challenging circumstances,” he said on Twitter.
Canada and the United States have been working hard to resolve their NAFTA differences since the end of August, after American and Mexican officials reached a bilateral agreement of their own.
However, the prime minister has said throughout the process that his government would not sign a modernized NAFTA just to get a deal. Issues at the table have included the automotive industry, dairy, dispute resolution, cultural industries and intellectual property.
Canada's dairy industry, in particular, has been in American crosshairs for months, with the United States demanding more access to this country's market, as well as changes to parts of Canada's domestic milk-pricing system.
The U.S. has wanted access to about 3.5 per cent of Canada's dairy market, which is similar to what Canada granted under the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership. There were strong indications this was also part of the deal reached Sunday night. Media reports say farmers will be compensated. The Americans have also asked for changes to several dairy classes. iPolitics has learned that the contentious Class 7 has been eliminated in this deal. Class 7 is a domestic pricing class that governs milk ingredients such as skim milk powder and milk proteins.
The difficult politics of the trade deal were immediately on view with Parti Québécois Leader Jean-François Lisée saying on social media that Quebec dairy farms had been sacrificed by Trudeau. Quebec voters will elect a new government on Monday, with all parties saying the new trade deal could not touch Canada's dairy market.
The Toronto Star is reporting that Canada has been able to preserve the dispute-resolution mechanism known as Chapter 19. The federal government had wanted to hold onto that to avoid having disputes settled in U.S. courts.
Other reports say Canada has been able to maintain its exemption for culture.
Ministers had arrived for the cabinet meeting Sunday amid strong indications the end was in sight for a renewed NAFTA.
Freeland and Ambassador to the United States David MacNaughton had spent the day in Ottawa, taking part in an aggressive, long-distance, last-minute push to get Canada into a free trade deal.
Trudeau arrived at his downtown office, located directly across from Parliament Hill, around 7:30 p.m. He did not comment as he headed into the building, but media reports from the U.S. capital were indicating a deal was near.
While most ministers also stayed mum, Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay said he's “always concerned about the agriculture industry.” He was joined in the meeting room by his deputy minister Chris Forbes.
With files from the Canadian Press
https://ipolitics.ca/2018/09/30/canada-and-the-us-reach-11th-hour-trade-deal/
28 juin 2023 | Local, Aérospatial
The estimated cost of $5.9 billion would include up to 16 Boeing-built P-8A Poseidon aircraft as well as numerous onboard systems.
10 mars 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Joe Gould and Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON ― The U.S. aerospace and defense sector is feeling the impact of the coronavirus, with companies limiting travel, defense trade events scuttled and contingency planning underway. As stocks fell sharply Monday on a combination of coronavirus fears and plunging oil prices, defense firms were girding for the worst and looking to the White House for guidance. The comments came days after spread of the coronavirus forced the weeklong closure of two F-35 related facilities in Italy and Japan―a sign the outbreak had begun to impact operations within the American defense industrial base. “The normal ways of doing business are definitely going to change,” said Aerospace Industries Association CEO Eric Fanning. “We're trying to get to the place where we're not reacting on a day-to-day basis to what's happening and getting in front of some of these things and maybe making some proactive decisions. But everyone is kind of looking to everyone else to take the lead on how to address this.” Lockheed, Raytheon and Honeywell were among dozens of companies that pulled out of last month's Singapore Air Show, which is typically the largest defense trade show in Asia―and SXSW, a show AIA participates in, was cancelled. The two offer a glimpse into how fears of corona virus could impact other defense trade shows and conferences. “It felt like a ghost town. It definitely was a strange experience,” Fanning said about the Singapore conference. While it's easy to overstate the importance of trade shows in cementing major deals, the deals announced at the shows are often worked out in advance, Fanning said. Still, the shows are still valuable for face-to-face networking between international defense officials and industry. As of Monday, the National Defense Industrial Association still planned to hold its Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla., this May. Its 2020 Pacific Operational Science and Technology Conference in Honolulu was ongoing this week, with more than 700 attendees, a spokeswoman said. At least one major defense firm, Boeing, has limited its employees to “business-essential” travel, and it has been rescheduling some events, reducing face-to-face meetings in favor of virtual meetings, enabling telecommuting when possible. “These measures are temporary and aimed to prevent the spread of the virus, shorten its impact and ensure the health and safety of our employees as well as the general public," a Boeing spokesman said. The virus has infected more than 110,000 people worldwide, and Italy on Sunday followed China's lead in quarantining a big swath of its country in hopes of corralling the spread. That sparked more fears in the financial markets that quarantines would snarl supply chains for companies even more than they already have. While COVID-19's long term impacts on the defense aerospace industry may take time to manifest, they could be complicated by the uncertainty of the financial market and ongoing trade wars with China, according to Fanning and others. “Supply chains are global, they're inter-related, they're incredibly complex. Having real good situational awareness into them is difficult to begin with, then you add any instability on top of it, it gets harder. And this definitely is added to that,” Fanning said. The new coronavirus is now spreading on every continent except Antarctica and hurting consumer spending, industrial production, and travel. As COVID-19 spreads around the world, many investors feel helpless in trying to estimate how much it will hurt the economy and corporate profits, and the easiest response to such uncertainty may be to get out. After initially taking an optimistic view on the virus — hoping that it would remain mostly in China and cause just a short-term disruption — investors are realizing they likely woefully underestimated it. On Monday, the Dow Jones U.S. Aerospace & Defense Index was down 26 percent over the last month, lagging the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was down 18 percent. “Defense should do relatively better [than consumer sectors], but it's not gonna be immune,” said Byron Callan, a policy research expert at Capital Alpha Partners. “It's gonna catch a mild fever where, you know, there are gonna be other parts of the U.S. economy that are gonna be in a critical situation." “Buy-America” regulations and other controls mean the U.S. defense industry's supply chains may be less susceptible to disruption than some consumer sectors, where reliance on China-made components is more widespread―and few, if any supply chains are as globally linked as the F-35's, said U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Defense and Aerospace Export Council's president, Keith Webster. “I would say in the U.S. defense sector's supply chain is less vulnerable than maybe a product in the commercial sector, but we'll have to see,” Webster said. “If this continues across the F-35 partner nations, with their industrial sharing, one could see an impact.” On the flip side, China's weeks-long factory closures could eventually see parallels in the U.S., if the virus is not quickly contained. White collar employees may be able to telecommute, but if skilled laborers are forced to stay home, that could mean problems for the primes and their lower-tier suppliers. “Are there parallels to China in the U.S.? We don't know,” Webster said. “The first step is containment, and the next step is mitigation. China went into mitigation very quickly, which is keeping everybody home. We're just beginning to see that thought process here.” Short of factory closings, factory workers staying home for school closures or to care for sick relatives could trigger work slow downs, particularly at the lower tiers of the supply chain, especially the ones that rely on smaller pools of workers. Those companies could suffer too if they rely on the commercial side of the aerospace sector, which is expected to be harder hit, Callan said. “You can see the ramifications on the pace of work, but it's not like the airline industry or the cruise ship industry where all of a sudden none of your customers show up,” Callan said, adding: “There could be a cascading effect from some commercial aerospace. Again, it's at very, very small level, but it's still a factor.” The Associated Press and Aaron Mehta contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/03/09/coronavirus-shaking-up-americas-defense-industry/
29 octobre 2021 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Chers collègues et partenaires du milieu de la défense, En tant que gestionnaire par intérim du BEPS, je tenais communiquer avec vous pour partager le texte du discours d'ouverture prononcé par le chef d'état-major par intérim, le général Wayne Eyre à la Conférence de Kingston sur la sécurité internationale. Je suis conscient que certains ont probablement assisté à la conférence, mais je crois qu'une version écrite peut être une référence utile. La conférence, EN CAS D'URGENCE : Le rôle des militaires dans la pandémie et les crises futures a eu lieu cette semaine. Conférence de Kingston sur la sécurité internationale Comme toujours, nous vous remercions de votre collaboration. (Veuillez noter que le discours est bilingue et n'a pas été entièrement traduit dans l'une ou l'autre des langues officielles.) Cordialement, ***** Dear colleagues and partners in defence, As the acting manager for the Strategic Engagement Office, I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you the opening address given by the Acting Chief of Staff, General Wayne Eyre at the Kingston Conference on International Security. I'm conscious of the fact that many of you probably attended but a written version of the address may be interesting as a reference. The conference, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: The Military's Role in the Pandemic & Future Crises, was held this week. Kingston Conference on International Security As always, we thank you for your collaboration.