BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Canada hopes a summit with the United States and Mexico on March 23 will produce consensus on the need to reform the NAFTA trade pact, Quebec Premier Jean Charest said on Thursday.
Canada has been locked in a trade spat with the United States over U.S. anti-dumping duties on Canada's multibillion-dollar lumber exports. It argues the North American Free Trade Agreement needs an overhaul to better handle such issues.
Charest, a vocal campaigner for reform, said during a visit to Brussels that he expected NAFTA to be raised during the talks between U.S. President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox.
"I hope we can agree on a common agenda. I am hopeful the three countries can agree on an agenda and mandate their people to go away and negotiate on it," he told reporters after an event hosted by a Brussels thinktank.
"NAFTA has become a question mark for many of us in terms of its future," he told the event earlier.
The Canadian ambassador to the European Union told the same audience Canada shared that and other views expressed in Charest's speech.
Bush is hosting the March summit in a bid to improve relations with his neighbors with Texas as the likely venue.
Canada ships about $6.0 billion worth of spruce, pine, fir and other softwood to the United States annually. The sales are subject to special import taxes of 21 percent, including duties to offset what Washington says are artificially low prices set by Canadian lumber exporters.
Canada denies there is any dumping and has taken its case to NAFTA, which in a preliminary ruling said Washington had failed to prove that U.S. industry suffered from Canadian imports.
A final NAFTA verdict is due early this year but Charest said the long-running episode showed there was a need to strengthen NAFTA, for example by ensuring it could deliver legally binding solutions to trade conflicts.
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