This is a very good question. On our end, it's something that I think we have a broad handle on, but certainly we're going to be digging more into sector-specific stuff. We're going to have our team looking into this more.
The broad concern we would have—and it's following up on Claire's comments as well—is just understanding the nature of trade currently with Canada and Brazil. I appreciate that it's a sizeable market. It's a region that could be considered in a developing part of the world and a growing economy. Our trade is very minuscule to this part of the world. I crunched some numbers just before this presentation began. I think if you measure total trade between Canada and Mercosur last year, it would equate to something like the same amount of trade we would generate with the United States in four days.
There would be export opportunities certainly in any situation where you would want to eliminate tariffs that would be considered a barrier. In the case of auto, we have sizeable tariffs in Brazil of upwards of 35%. Ostensibly you'd think that would be a boost. There are also issues in the Mercosur trading bloc where there are renowned non-tariff barriers, lots of subsidies, fights going on with the WTO currently right now in Brazil. There's no sense that would end in a meaningful way.
The question I think we have to ask is this. Market access and opening doors is one thing. Is it demonstrable improvements for Canada? Is it worth the trade-off of some of the other things in trade agreements that have been proven to be very troubling for Canada? These would be things around special privileges for investors and locking us into regulatory freezes, and things of that nature.
When we look at these agreements, why my comments around doing the impact assessments independently and comprehensively are so critical is that I think the days are gone when we can just say if you take that tariff off, maybe that will give us more than a couple of hundred million dollars' worth of exports. I think our thinking on free trade has to evolve beyond that now.