Canada faces new test from Italy

Add Italy to growing list of trade headaches facing Canada.

Italy’s Agriculture Minister Gian Marco Centinaio is reported as saying Italy won’t ratify the Canada-European Union free trade accord and that he’s heard doubts about it from many of his European colleagues.

The development adds to Canada’s significant trade challenges — which already include deep uncertainty surrounding the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement and hefty steel and aluminium tariffs imposed recently by the United States.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, in Washington to try to jump start stalled NAFTA negotiations, says she’s confident Italy will eventually sign on to the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, or CETA.

A spokesman for Francois-Philippe Champagne says the international trade minister visited Italy a few days ago to sell the merits of CETA to Italy’s populist government, which took power on June 1.

Following an hour-long meeting with U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer, Freeland says Canada, Mexico and the U.S. will continue negotiating NAFTA through the summer.

“We didn’t set specific dates today,” she said Thursday. “We did very much, though, agree ... that NAFTA talks continue and that we’re going to make a real push over the summer.”