\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t The South American bloc Mercosur made up of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay is going through an unprecedented opening to trade. Paradoxically, that\u2019s largely thanks to cooperation between Javier Milei and Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, two governments at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.<\/p>\n
For most of its existence, Mercosur avoided seeking new trading partners outside South America. The bloc\u2019s last free trade agreements (FTAs) were signed back in 2007 and 2010, with Israel and Egypt, respectively.<\/p>\n
That has started to change. In September 2025, Mercosur signed an FTA with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) which includes Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland and in January, it did the same with the European Union, the biggest deal in the South American bloc\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
On top of that, an FTA with Canada is widely expected to clear this year, while talks continue with Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and El Salvador.<\/p>\n
What changed? Julieta Zelicovich, an international affairs analyst and professor at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR), told the Herald that \u201cthe shift in Mercosur\u2019s international strategy didn\u2019t start now,\u201d but is \u201cthe result of 10 years of a new negotiating approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was around 2016, at one of the summit meetings, that the presidents decided to move forward with what they called \u2018updating the external agenda,’\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In that context, \u201cMercosur decided to review the free trade agreements it had and start negotiating new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a problem, though. \u201cMercosur tends to take pretty firm positions, especially when it comes to protecting sensitive sectors, and it goes on the offensive in agriculture, which happens to be the sensitive sector for its counterparts. That made for trade talks that were hard to close.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shift came after the pandemic and the change in U.S. trade policy. \u201cThe international context has pushed many of these counterparts, like the European Union or Canada, to soften their previous negotiating positions and finally prioritize the Mercosur agenda,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The roles of Argentina and Brazil Marcelo Elizondo, president of the Argentine Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), told the Herald that the shift in Mercosur started with a change in Argentina\u2019s stance. After Milei took office, the country \u201cshowed an appetite for opening up that it had never shown before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUruguay has always favored greater openness, and Paraguay too. Brazil has gone back and forth, but it has consistently favored the EU deal. Argentina, for a long time, was very closed off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In Brazil\u2019s case, he said several factors are at play. Among them: \u201cLula da Silva\u2019s effort to position himself as a player in the new geopolitics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elizondo also noted that \u201cthere are many sectors in Brazil that used to be protectionist and have now grown and integrated with multinational companies that are pushing for openness, and that has also generated some support for opening up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBrazil realized it was putting Mercosur an asset of its foreign policy at risk by holding onto a closed economic stance while the other three partners were pushing to open up,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
As the bloc\u2019s largest member, Brazil \u201calways holds a leadership position because of its size,\u201d though he insisted that \u201cthe big push came from Argentina.\u201d<\/p>\n
Federico Vaccarezza, secretary of the Europe Department at the Institute of International Relations at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), painted a different picture.<\/p>\n
He argued that \u201cwhat matters to negotiators on the other side of the table is Brazil Argentina doesn\u2019t matter as much,\u201d since it accounts for just \u201c0.3% of world trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also explained that \u201cit\u2019s not that Brazil didn\u2019t want to go after these trade deals. What Brazil had was a view on timing on when to go after them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s aiming to strengthen its productive and export capacity by opening up markets it didn\u2019t have before, drawing in investment and giving the state an active role,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The potential of the new deals Looking ahead, Elizondo highlighted the importance of the Canada FTA for attracting investment. \u201cIt\u2019s an economy with a lot of complementarity, and there\u2019s also room to pursue joint investment projects.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vaccarezza added that the deal \u201cwould be one of the most important, especially on mining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both also pointed to the need to open up markets in Asia. Elizondo said \u201ca deal with Japan would be very important,\u201d along with one with South Korea.<\/p>\n
Vaccarezza also said that \u201cVietnam is a really good opportunity to break into Asia with food and energy, and Indonesia is also a phenomenal market when it comes to energy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The South American bloc Mercosur made up of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay is going through an unprecedented opening to trade. Paradoxically, that\u2019s largely thanks to cooperation between Javier Milei and Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, two governments at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. For most of its existence, Mercosur avoided seeking new trading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":68656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[414,42,2764,59],"tags":[595,96,7329,86],"class_list":["post-68655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-economics","category-mercosur","category-politics","tag-business","tag-economics","tag-mercosur","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}