The moratorium, agreed at the dawn of the internet, lapsed for the first time in 28 years after World Trade Organization countries failed to agree on a routine extension.

Four days of talks among trade ministers in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde broke up in the early hours of Monday with Brazil and Turkey blocking a bid to extend the e-commerce moratorium, which including on digital downloads and streaming.

Countries also failed to agree on a path to reform.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement that he has secured agreements from dozens of countries, including nearly all major trading partners, not to impose tariffs on U.S. digital transmissions. He vowed that if the WTO fails to restore the moratorium, “the United States will work outside of the WTO with all interested partners to get it done.”

Greer, who is the architect of U.S. President Donald Trump’s multi-front tariff assault on global trading partners, said he was disappointed that the meeting ended in an impasse. He said some countries demonstrated a “lack of seriousness” in WTO reform by not sending their trade ministers to Cameroon.

“I have always been skeptical of the value of the WTO, and this week’s conference confirmed that this organization will play only a limited role in future global trade policy efforts,” Greer said.

Increasingly sidelined by economic nationalism

The WTO has been increasingly sidelined by economic nationalism in the past decade, and its 14th ministerial conference in Cameroon will further that trend, analysts said.

The talks tested the WTO’s relevance after a year of huge trade turmoil and more recent disruptions in the Middle East.

Still, a subset of 66 members did agree to sidestep previous hurdles to ‌usher in the world’s first baseline deal on digital trade rules among participants.

The parties of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership — 12 countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Japanand Mexico but not the U.S. — met with the EU on the sidelines of the WTO talks.

As diplomats pursue a mix of agreements between two or larger subsets of countries, they risk creating a complex “spaghetti bowl” of agreements, said Dmitry Grozoubinski, executive director of the Geneva Trade Platform.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the trade body hoped the moratorium could still be restored, adding that Brazil and the U.S. were trying to reach agreement on it.

— Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva and Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and David Lawder in Washington, D.C.

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The Environmental Protection Agency set total 2026 biofuel obligations at 26.81 billion RINs and the 2027 obligation at 27.02 billion RINs.

WHY IT MATTERS: While U.S. biofuel mandates set higher demand for oilseeds, the rules could disincentivize American buyers from choosing Canadian canola in the future.

The total mandates include 70 per cent of the blending obligations that were waived under the Small Refinery Exemptions program during the 2023-2025 compliance years, the EPA said.

The EPA in June 2025 had proposed total biofuel blending volumes at 24.02 billion RINs in 2026 and 24.46 billion RINs in 2027.

EPA added on Friday that, starting in 2028, foreign fuels and feedstocks will receive only half of the RINs of American-made products.

The rule ends a period of uncertainty for both the agriculture and refining industry, whose fortunes can be significantly impacted by the country’s biofuels policies.

Farmers and biofuel producers typically want high quotas to spur demand for their products, while refiners view the blending obligations as a costly burden.

On Friday, Canola Council of Canada president Chris Davison said he was pleased with what he’s seen of the EPA’s decision, particularly the increased blending mandate.

“We’re very pleased to see those updates, and Canadian canola can make a meaningful contribution there,” Davison said.

“Canola is a modest but important feedstock in U.S. biomass-based diesel production,” said Davis.

The new RVOs should create an “appreciable opportunity” for Canada’s canola crushers who have greatly increased production capacity in recent years.

Davison said he was not sure what ‘foreign feedstocks’ would mean as at one point the agency was considering a proposal to create a ring fence covering all of North America.

— Reporting by Richard Valdmanis and Daphne Psaledakis

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WHY IT MATTERS: Conversations between Canadian and American agriculture groups could help set a tone ahead of the CUSMA review this summer.

Hoekstra spoke at the Canadian Crops Convention in Toronto on March 12.

He said tariffs are likely to stay on as cost of doing business in the American market. Canada should “do everything they can to get into the lowest tariff buckets.”

“You can make compelling cases for us to do business with Canada and Canada to get the lowest tariffs of any trading partner in the world,” Hoekstra said.

U.S. and Canadian businesses both need to advocate for that relationship.

Cross-border relationships

Some in the Canadian agriculture sector say that advocacy is already underway.

Michael Harvey, executive director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance said many Canadians have been advocating for cross-border business relationships. Last fall, CAFTA led a trade mission to Washington D.C. involving 12 national industry groups. The group’s goal was to highlight the importance of renewing the Canada-U.S. Mexico Agreement.

Pierre Petelle, CEO of CropLife Canada, said he has seen U.S. farm groups openly support CUSMA over the last six months — something not common in the early days of the second Trump presidency.

“That puts us in a much, much better position,” he said.

Canada shouldn’t overestimate its value: Hoekstra

When negotiating trade, Hoekstra said Canada must not overestimate its value to the American market.

“We don’t wake up in the morning worried about Canada,” he said. “You don’t find Americans advocating … ‘boycott Canadian products.”

“When you walk into the negotiating team, or you get on TV and you say, ‘America needs our fill-in-the-blank,’ whatever commodity you’re talking about, you’re going to get a certain kind of response,” Hoekstra said.

“Because for just about everything that you bring in, it’s kind of like, ‘no, we really don’t.’”

The U.S. has done a good job of diversifying its markets and cultivating long-term relationships said Darcy Pawlik, executive director of the Wheat Growers Association. This gives some truth to the idea it doesn’t need Canadian imports.

“They’ve done the diversification of their procurement already,” Pawlik said. “Canada, we have really not carried the ball in a mature way, from a trade perspective internationally, from diversifying markets.”

Canada may have some commodities American need, but Pawlik said in many cases it has found other options.

‘We should always aim for free trade’

Hoekstra suggested pitching why doing business with Canada is a “phenomenal deal” for the United States.

“You will get a much different response in Washington than coming in and saying, ‘you absolutely need our stuff.’”

A compelling case could land Canada in the lowest tariff bucket, the ambassador said.

Being in the lowest bucket shouldn’t be Canada’s goal, Pawlik said.

“We need to always aim for zero-tariff,” he said. “We should always aim for free trade.”

“If there’s some points of negotiation that the Canadian government just can’t find a way to work together on and we end up in that lowest tariff bucket, then so be it. But we should never start from a place of being OK with some tariffs. We’ve got to aim for zero.”

Integration of supply chains a key bargaining point

Entering negotiations with a “we have what you need” approach could indeed be harmful, as it will only upset Trump and his administration said Patrick Leblond, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, in an email to Glacier FarmMedia.

However, the U.S. is not entirely self-sufficient.

“Yes, Canada has some of what the U.S. needs, but we’re not the only ones,” Leblond wrote, adding the U.S. has more leverage than Canada on this issue.

Petelle said it may be important to consider the integration of Canada-U.S. supply chains as opposed to what goods one country needs over the other.

Whether crop protection products and seed, or processing and feed, the supply chain is “extremely integrated,” he said.

In the seed and crop protection sector, Canada probably needs the U.S. more than it needs Canada, Petelle said.

“We import a lot of our seed directly from the U.S. and other regions. A lot of the manufacturing of crop protection is done in the U.S. … so we’re pretty reliant on the input side for seed and crop protection.”

Canada and the U.S. “really produce food together,” Harvey said citing examples of beef crossing the border to be processed and Canadian wheat going to an American plant before being sent back to Canada.

“We’ve really got this deeply integrated production model, and it would be very negative for American interests for that model to be … gummed up,” he said.

American agri-food sector on board with CUSMA

“I think the most important thing is to have American interests who are in favor of the relationship,” Harvey said, “we’re seeing it really clearly that the American agri-food sector is in favor of continuing the treaty.”

In February, 40 American agricultural organizations formed a coalition to support CUSMA. Nearly 100 Canadian groups made a similar plea in December.

Petelle said this alignment between American and Canadian groups is a positive signal and could mean the beginnings of good negotiations between the two countries.

Despite his assertion there will always be a cost of entry in the American market, Hoekstra said the U.S. is interested in renewing CUSMA.

Pawlik said Canadian commodity groups should start talking with their U.S. counterparts ahead of the CUSMA review this summer.

“Wheat organizations talk to the wheat organizations, you know, and soybeans talk to soybeans… so that when they get to the negotiating floor, they can say, ‘hey, no problem. We’ve actually got industry leading these conversations. We’re figuring out ways to get along.’”

‘Get back to the table’

Hoekstra said negotiations around the trade agreement have been stalled by headwinds from Canada. He said there “hasn’t been a substantive discussion since the end of October” between the two countries.

Petelle said he saw things differently.

“It was interesting to hear the ambassador characterize it as ‘four months lost,’” he said. “Last time I checked, it was the U.S. that broke off the discussions.”

“We’ve had several months of nothing really moving, but I think that decision was theirs last fall,” he continued. “So, the first thing is to get back to the table and start having serious conversations, rather than through the media or through public statements by ambassadors and others.”

Pawlik said many Canadians would do well to have a better understanding of CUSMA and how tightly connected the two countries really are.

“The one thing that we continue to forget is that we are allies, right?” he said. “(We should) treat each other with maybe a little bit more respect than what we’ve been seeing to date, and that should be encouraged amongst all Canadians.”

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The paper, released ahead of this week’s triennial WTO Ministerial meeting in Cameroon, underscores the U.S. Trade Representative’s insistence on sweeping reforms that are in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade agenda and allow for more plurilateral trade agreements and differentiated tariffs.

• U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is expected to attend the March 26-29 ministerial meeting in Yaoundé.
• USTR has already rejected one proposal for reforming the WTO.
• The meeting in Cameroon comes at a critical moment for the WTO as Trump continues to upend the tariff system.
• U.S. says adherence to the Most Favored Nation principle and tariffs negotiated decades ago precludes WTO members from differentiating among trade partners.
• Without naming China, USTR quoted a January speech by Greer in which he said that some countries structurally export more than they import to seek a “shortcut to growth at others’ expense.”
• “In sum, members need to explore options so that they can more easily adjust their tariffs in response to threats to their economies, including from countries that run persistent and large surpluses or drive imbalances by building and maintaining overcapacity,” USTR said.
• The World Trade Organization’s 164 members commit to treating other members equally so they can all benefit from each other’s lowest tariffs, highest import quotas and fewest trade barriers. This principle is known as Most Favored Nation treatment.

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The sources told Reuters that the “candid and constructive” Paris talks led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng would set in motion possible “deliverables” for Trump’s trip to China to meet with Xi at the end of March.

But they added that the leaders would have the final say on the proposals.

Agricultural goods

The Chinese side showed openness to potential additional purchases of U.S. agricultural goods including poultry, beef and non-soybean row crops, one of the sources said, adding that China was still committed to buy 25 million metric tons of American soybeans for each of the next three years.

Chinese officials left the talks at OECD headquarters in Paris without speaking to reporters. The discussions follow several meetings to ease tensions last year between Bessent, He, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese chief trade negotiator Li Chenggang.

“All these meetings were to create stability, and today was remarkably stable,” one of the sources said of the talks.

Spokespersons for the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office declined to characterize the discussions on Sunday.

Managed trade mechanism

The two sides discussed the establishment of new formal mechanisms to help manage trade and investment between the world’s two largest economies that may be considered by Trump and Xi in Beijing, the sources said. Technical talks on the proposed U.S.-China “Board of Trade” and “Board of Investment” were expected on Monday.

One of the sources said that the Board of Trade was the more developed of the two proposals, and would be aimed at finding products and sectors where the U.S. and China could increase trade in a balanced way without compromising each other’s national security or critical supply chains.

The Board of Investment would not set broad investment policies but would address “discrete investment issues” that may arise between the countries, the source said.

Critical minerals

The sources also said U.S. officials discussed the flow of Chinese-produced critical minerals to U.S. companies and raised concerns about the U.S. aerospace industry’s lack of access to yttrium from China, which is used in jet engine turbines, among other applications.

One of the sources said the two sides “found some ways to loosen up” more challenging areas in critical minerals, but did not provide specifics.

Greer and Bessent in the talks also emphasized the U.S. desire for China to increase purchases of Boeing jetliners and U.S. coal, oil and natural gas, which could be further discussed on Monday, the sources said.

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Speaking on Thursday at the Canadian Crops Convention in Toronto, he said the U.S. believes CUSMA, known as USMCA in the U.S., has worked well but there have been no “substantive” talks with Canada since October.

The Canadian minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade met with his counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, last week.

“I think we want to get to an agreement, but we are facing some headwinds in the negotiations,” Hoekstra said, citing a lack of “substantive” discussions since October.

Hoekstra said:

• Canada should do everything it can to get into the lowest tariff buckets.
• The U.S. is looking for coalitions with countries that will make sure that if there are trade agreements, then the non-tariff trade barriers are removed.
• U.S. President Donald Trump has said there will be some tariff for getting access to the U.S. market so the Canadian government and businesses should make the case why it is beneficial for the U.S. to do business with Canada at the lowest tariff rate.
• Canada and the U.S. can also work more closely on energy. The U.S. already imports a lot of oil and natural gas from Canada, the U.S. processes much of this energy, and it would want to expand the partnership.
• Canada should also build a stockpile of critical minerals in Canada or the U.S. to use during emergencies. Canada has many critical minerals and it should develop a full supply chain to become an ideal partner for the U.S.

The office of the Canadian Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who is responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, said that
Canada remains committed to establishing a new economic and security relationship with the United States that will deliver for workers and businesses on both sides of the border.

“The Minister looks forward to further engagement with his American and Mexican counterparts over the coming months as we undertake the trilateral and bilateral review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.”

— Additional reporting by Promit Mukherjee in Ottawa

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The Kansas legislation is one of about a dozen Bayer-supported bills introduced in state legislatures. It comes just weeks after the company announced a proposed $7.25 billion (C$9.85 billion) settlement that would resolve most of approximately 65,000 outstanding lawsuits related to Roundup.

Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in ​2018, and with it an avalanche of litigation from people who say the product caused them to develop cancer. The company is supporting state and federal legislative efforts to try to head off further Roundup-related litigation, a company spokesperson said.

WHY IT MATTERS: Glyphosate is a key crop protection product for Canadian farmers. Glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup has been the subject of thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. and in Canada related to claims it causes cancer.

So far Bayer has had mixed success. Two bills have passed in North Dakota and Georgia; the outlook for the Kansas bill is uncertain.

Opponents of the Kansas bill distrust the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s assessment that glyphosate pesticides such as Bayer’s Roundup product are not likely to cause cancer, while proponents fear that the widely used pesticide will be made more expensive or pulled from the market, negatively affecting many businesses in the heavily agricultural state.

“I’ll wake up and I’ll have over 400 emails and half of them are saying yes, half of them are saying no,” said Democratic state senator Silas Miller, who sits on the agriculture committee. He had not decided how to vote when he spoke to Reuters.

Kenny Titus, a Republican senator on the committee, said he was also inundated with emails both for and against the bill, but planned to oppose it.

In an earnings call on March 4, the company reported a fourth-quarter net loss of about 3.76 billion euros (C$5.93 billion), attributed in part to the cost of litigation. Bayer is also the defendant in a case before the Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments in April on whether the company had a duty to warn customers that glyphosate could cause cancer.

In Washington, the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday morning advanced a draft farm bill also supported by Bayer requiring uniform pesticide labels nationwide. If passed, it would bar local governments from requiring chemical companies to put health warnings on the labels of pesticide products that differ from language used by the EPA.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order to encourage more domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup.

MAHA blowback

The move has generated blowback from the so-called MAHA coalition, many of whom supported Trump in the 2024 election, and whose advocates are now in the administration — including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Just as the large MAHA base begins to consider what to do at midterms, the President issued an Executive Order to expand domestic glyphosate production. The very same carcinogenic pesticide that MAHA cares about most,” MAHA-affiliated pesticide activist Kelly Ryerson wrote on social media after the order was announced.

Titus, who said many of his goals overlap with the MAHA movement, said that for his Republican colleagues, the split on pesticides among conservatives had put them in “an interesting position.”

A Missouri state court judge last week preliminarily approved Bayer’s proposed $7.25 billion settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit brought by people who say Roundup caused them to contract non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The judge said he will hear objections from people affected before deciding in July whether to grant final approval.

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The pledges are part of the Trump administration’s 2026 Trade Policy Agenda, issued over a week after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Here are some key details of the agenda:

• The U.S. will seek to fix deficiencies in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA), including on regional rules of origin and challenges created by investment from non-market economies and industrial overcapacity.
• The U.S. will seek to manage bilateral trade with China for better balance and fairness and monitor China’s compliance with a trade truce reached last year.
• The Trump administration will work to strike new trade deals with partners and finalize framework deals with the European Union, India, Japan, North Macedonia, South Korea, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Thailand and Vietnam.
• The U.S. will finalize deals with Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan, and enforce all of its agreements through existing trade laws.
• The U.S. will evaluate whether new “Section 301” unfair trade investigations are needed to address global overcapacity, abuses in seafood and fisheries, export-driven agricultural policies, pharmaceutical pricing and digital services taxes.
• The administration will seek to bring back to the U.S. supply chains for critical minerals, semiconductors, auto parts, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, metals and energy technologies.
• The U.S. will seek to attract foreign investment while ensuring that this will not imperil national security.
• The U.S. will seek to advance its trade interests through the G7, G20, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Trade Organization.
• The Trump administration sees limited opportunities for WTO reform but will urge reassessments of “most favored nation” tariffs to pursue bilateral agreements.

— Reporting by David Lawder

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The decision could be unwelcome news for larger oil refiners that have argued that additional blending obligations would raise their costs. But it could help the biofuel industry by boosting demand for blending credits.

WHY IT MATTERS: U.S. biofuel policy can effect demand for Canadian canola.

Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refineries have to blend billions of gallons of ethanol and other biofuels into their fuel or buy credits, called RINs, from those that do. But small refineries can have those obligations waived if they demonstrate economic hardship.

The question of whether to reallocate those exempted blending obligations to larger refiners is a point of contention between the agriculture and fuel industries.

Biofuel groups have pushed the administration to fully reallocate the exempted gallons, saying it is crucial to support biofuel producers and the farmers growing their feedstocks. Refiners, meanwhile, have warned that reallocation unfairly forces larger plants to cover for smaller rivals, raising their compliance costs and potentially increasing pump prices.

The issue has taken on added significance after the Trump administration processed a large backlog of waiver requests totaling more than 2 billion gallons for the years 2023 through 2025, representing a sizable share of overall renewable fuel blending requirements.

Potential shift toward higher biofuel blending?

EPA officials in recent weeks have signaled they settled on reallocating at least 50 per cent of the waived volumes for those three years, and that the level could go higher, according to the sources, who asked not to be named discussing the matter.

That reflects a shift in preference toward increased biofuels blending, after the Environmental Protection Agency last year initially sought public feedback on a range of options from zero to 100 per cent.

The EPA did not comment on the Reuters reporting, but said that the agency was considering public comments and aimed to finalize the rule by the end of March.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the reallocation plan.

The EPA also sent its proposed 2026 and 2027 biofuel blending quotas to the White House on Wednesday, with a final rule expected before the end of March, an EPA administrator told attendees at an ethanol conference in Florida on Wednesday.

The sources cautioned that no final decision has been made and the approach could change before it is formally released.

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“They have a few ideas on how they might want to have a deal with us. We’re obviously open to that,” Greer said in an interview on Fox Business Network.

WHY IT MATTERS: Canada and U.S. agricultural supply chains are heavily integrated and could face disruption, depending on the outcome of the CUSMA review.

Greer said he spoke with his trade counterpart earlier on Wednesday and that they would meet in Washington “in a couple weeks.”

“We’re open to talk, and we’ll see what they have to say,” Greer told FBN’s “Mornings with Maria” program.

Representatives for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S.-Canada tensions have grown in recent months over trade and other issues as Trump has targeted Washington’s northern neighbor.

The Trump administration is reviewing the Canada-United States-Mexico trade pact enacted during Trump’s first term in the White House term and faces a July 1 deadline to notify Congress whether it plans to change the agreement.

‘Reshoring’ not moving fast enough: Greer

Greer said U.S. officials are focused on moving production of cars and other goods back to the U.S. But the reshoring of critical supply chains is not happening fast enough under the current pact, he said in a separate interview with CBC News, expressing concern that China will funnel goods through Canada to avoid certain tariffs as Beijing and Ottawa seek to develop closer ties.

“We don’t want a situation where Canada’s being used as a back door for Chinese goods,” he told CBC reporter Katie Simpson late on Tuesday in a video posted on X.

“If Canada wants to agree that we can have some level of higher tariff on them while they open their markets to us on things like dairy and other things, then that’s a helpful conversation,” Greer added.

Trump has said Washington could leave CUSMA and strike separate deals with Canada and Mexico as his administration pursues separate talks with each bordering country.

Greer told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday that he would continue separate negotiations with representatives of Canada and Mexico over the coming year “because our relationships with those countries are so different.”

One solution could be to “tack on” separate protocols for each nation onto CUSMA “to fix some of the gaps,” he said.

— Additional reporting by Promit Mukherjee

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