Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil unite against Uruguay for the Trans-Pacific Agreement

A few months ago, Montevideo announced negotiations with China to close a bilateral pact excluding Mercosur, and now it is known that it is trying to join the Trans-Pacific Agreement led by New Zealand and Australia alone.
Faced with this public information, the governments of Alberto Fernández, Jair Bolsonaro and Mario Benítez established a diplomatic strategy that is unprecedented in the thirty-year history of Mercosur. Through a common tweet, posted at the same time (9:00 in the morning in Uruguay), they warned Uruguay that they will act with the utmost legal rigor to avoid breaking the structural rules of the regional bloc.
“Given the actions of the Uruguayan government with a view to the individual negotiation of trade agreements with a tariff dimension, and taking into account the possible presentation, by the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, of a request for adhesion to the Comprehensive and Progressive Treaty of Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP ), the National Coordinators of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay before the Mercosur Common Market Group kindly inform the National Coordination of Uruguay that the three countries reserve the right to adopt any measures they deem necessary to defend their interests in the legal and commercial spheres”, states the joint communiqué signed by the foreign ministries of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
The reaction of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is the direct response to a trip that the Uruguayan foreign minister, Francisco Bustillo, began to Australia and New Zealand to deliver his country’s adhesion to the Trans-Pacific Agreement. Bustillo will carry out this act of full diplomatic symbolism tomorrow in Auckland (New Zealand), because the formal agreement signed by all its members is deposited there.
The Trans-Pacific Agreement is made up of Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, which implies 13 percent of world GDP and a market of more than 500 million inhabitants.