By Promit Mukherjee and Ryan Patrick Jones
OTTAWA, April 21 (Reuters) - Canada's chief trade negotiator to the United States, Janice Charette, said on Tuesday that she did not expect Canada and the U.S. to resolve all issues by July 1, but that would not mean the North American trade agreement would collapse.
"I think there's a lot of focus on July 1, which is kind of a checkpoint. It's not a cliff," Charette said in her first public remarks after taking up the position as Canada's top trade negotiator
in February.
She was speaking at a panel organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Ottawa.
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are part of the USMCA free trade agreement, called CUSMA in Canada, which is up for review by July 1.
The agreement has helped Canada evade a raft of global tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Under the agreement, which came into effect in July 2020, all three countries must review the deal and extend it for six years. Otherwise, it would move to annual reviews.
Companies and business leaders have claimed annual reviews could heighten uncertainty and scuttle investment and hiring.
Canada has not yet started any formal negotiations with the U.S., although the two countries have engaged on sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, automotive and lumber products that have hit Canadian industries hard.
Charette said given the range of issues and global deals keeping the U.S. engaged and in the interest of getting things right, it would not be possible to resolve everything by the due date.
"The trading agreement does remain in place," she said, even if issues are unresolved by July 1.
The exemptions under the free trade deal have left Canada with an effective U.S. import tariff rate among the lowest in the world.
"My instructions are very much about protecting the fundamentals of this agreement, not revisiting them," Charette said.
Her mandate is also to seek relief from the U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and automotive products and resolve long-running challenges that Canada has had with respect to softwood lumber and other subsectors, she added.
(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee in Ottawa and Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; Editing by Jamie Freed)
