Overview
- A joint communiqué on June 30 announced formal negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement between Mercosur and Japan that organisers say would link roughly 400 million people and a combined GDP near USD 7 trillion.
- Leaders also confirmed parallel processes with Vietnam and India, with a technical negotiating round with Vietnam set for August in Buenos Aires and a political accord to expand preferences with India.
- Brazil urged Mercosur to open talks with China and pledged to boost contributions to the bloc’s convergence fund by offering USD 100 million a year for ten years to help offset member asymmetries.
- Key internal implementation questions remain unresolved, most notably how to distribute tariff‑rate quotas from the recently provisionally applied Mercosur‑EU deal and how far to reform the External Common Tariff as Argentina presses for greater flexibility.
- If negotiations proceed, exporters and investors could gain new market access but smaller members risk losing out unless quota rules and the proposed FOCEM financing are agreed and enforced, so the next tests will be quota allocation, tariff reform and whether members accept differentiated flexibility.