The handshake that took eighteen months to arrange
Trade talks nobody thought would restart have produced a deal — and a very long list of exceptions.
The photograph took eleven seconds. Getting both parties into the same room took a year and a half of shuttle diplomacy nobody was allowed to describe.
The headline terms are simple. The annexes, which is where trade agreements actually live, run to several hundred pages.
Read the exceptions
Whole sectors are carved out, phased in or subject to review clauses that could unwind them entirely within four years.
Industry groups have split predictably between those inside the carve-outs and those outside them.
Ratification is expected to be the harder half of the job, and everyone signing knows it.
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