Why an EU-South America Trade Deal Is Finally in Sight
This article is for subscribers only.
The European Union and South American nations have spent more than a quarter of a century trying to strike a deal on free trade. The negotiations took on new urgency this year as a looming trade war between the world’s biggest trading partners — the US and China — spurred other regions to seek out new commercial partnerships to soften the blow.
The two sides finalized negotiations on Dec. 6 to erase a swathe of tariffs and other trade barriers, giving companies in Europe and a group of countries in South America’s Mercosur trading bloc — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — greater access to more than 700 million consumers across the two regions.