Brazil-Mexico negotiations to broaden and deepen ACE-53 – Exchange of Reciprocal Lists of Requests

In agreement with the decision of Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Enrique Peña Nieto to broaden and deepen the Economic Complementation Agreement nº 53 (ACE-53), Brazil and Mexico exchanged, this Friday, December 18, their lists of requests and offers on commercial goods. The lists include items of interest, whether industrial or agricultural, on the expansion of ACE-53, and will be evaluated by the technical teams of both countries in preparation for the next negotiating meeting, scheduled between February 16 and 18, 2016, in Brasilia.

To increase trade flows, expand their economic relationship and promote investment, the two largest economies of Latin America seek a substantial increase in the liberalized tariff universe. An expansion of tariff preferences on mutual access to markets of the two countries will allow the bilateral trade flow to be incremented in order to become more compatible with the size of the economies of Brazil and Mexico.

Thus, the exchange of lists on commercial goods represents a significant step and integrates the agenda of bilateral negotiations, which contemplates a wide range of issues, including services, electronic commerce, government procurement, trade facilitation, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, intellectual property and regulatory coherence, among others.

The Agreement will allow exploration of the great potential for growth in trade relations between the two countries, since the share of bilateral trade did not exceed 2% of the total volume of trade of the two countries with the rest of the world between 2012 and 2014. In 2015, from January to November, Mexico was the eighth exports destination market and the ninth home market of Brazilian imports. Commercial exchange, the sum of exports and imports, between January and November that year, was US$ 7,44 billion. In 2014, Brazil-Mexico trade reached US$ 9,03 billion.