Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us this afternoon.
I'm going to begin with Mr. Meltzer and Mr. Verheul, if I could.
Both of you talked about the U.S. most likely using the review to push current disputes and try to obtain favourable outcomes instead of pushing for areas to improve the agreement, which is the notion of a coordinated approach that you both mentioned.
Mr. Meltzer, you interviewed the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, at a Brookings event about CUSMA in March. The U.S. trade rep had some rather frank comments in her response in the interview. She mentioned, “I think that the disputes and the dispute outcomes need to be part of this, to the extent that we're not able to resolve the disputes using the dispute settlement system itself only.”
This and other comments from the U.S. trade representative suggest that for the U.S., dispute settlement is never really the final say.
Mr. Verheul, to your point earlier, what do we do when, essentially, the U.S. gets a response that it simply doesn't like?