International Trade committee  On the first question, I don't believe the U.S. has an agreement with any of the countries. They're certainly not currently in negotiations with Mercosur. Mercosur is in negotiations with the European Union and a number of other partners, but the U.S. isn't present there. In ter

International Trade committee  The decision on whether to launch an agreement is a national decision. So they would each make a national decision. Then once all four had agreed to move ahead, the Mercosur decision would essentially be made.

International Trade committee  Thank you. We're engaging with Mercosur in good faith, with absolutely every intention of looking into the possibility of launching free trade negotiations. That said, I think a number of people have pointed out the challenges, and it's clear that there are some. We don't know y

International Trade committee  I'll give you a quick answer. I think you made an important point that the free trade agreement is really one option in a very large tool kit. We've got a lot of other things going on. It's not by any means the only thing happening in the bilateral relationship. We try to have a

International Trade committee  I'm not sure whether you were asking specifically whether we'd be able to move forward with a free trade agreement with Brazil.

International Trade committee  Sure. First I'll touch on the point you raised about their relationship with Mercosur, because that's important to the approach we're taking with them. Mercosur is a customs union, and they will only negotiate free trade agreements as a bloc. If you're going to negotiate a free

International Trade committee  We usually try to conclude an overall agreement that touches on the investment, protection of investors, exchange of goods and services, as well as public procurement. We explore with them the possibility of doing something that deals with all these issues. But as we explained, t