Who else benefits from CETA?

The central pillar of the CETA will be the general obligation of each side (that is, Canada and the European Union, including respective political subunits) to not discriminate against the goods,. [...] For that reason, agreements such as the CETA, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the myriad of other such treaties are referred to commonly as preferential trade agreements, or “PTAs.” This E-Brief examines one of the important elements of the non-discrimination obligation in the CETA – the Most-Favoured-Nation (“MFN”) rule – and discusses beneficial side effects of the CETA, with [...] The MFN concept has a venerable ancestry, hinged on the notion of fair and non-discriminatory treatment in international commerce, and is one of the fundamental pillars of the global trading system. [...] MFN treatment was made one of the core obligations of commercial policy under the Havana Charter where Members were to undertake the obligation “to give due regard to the desirability of avoiding discrimination as between foreign investors.” The inclusion of MFN clauses became a general practice in the numerous bilateral, regional and multilateral investment- related agreements which were conclude [...] A long history of GATT and WTO panel decisions have said that the objective of the MFN obligation is that every WTO member has to assure fair competition to imports from all member states, the proverbial level-playing-field and one of the cardinal rules in international trade law.2 When MFN Does Not Apply There is an important qualification to the MFN rule, however.