(Adds comments by Canada's Trudeau, adds background)
By Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama,
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto will meet in Ottawa for a North American
leaders' Summit on June 29, the White House said on Wednesday.
The "Three Amigos" summit, with two key U.S. trading
partners, comes as Obama grapples with a wave of anti-free-trade
sentiment that has stalled ratification of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), a sweeping 12-nation pact that includes
Canada and Mexico.
Obama hopes the U.S. Congress will ratify the deal before he
leaves office on Jan. 20. But trade has become a lightning rod
issue in the presidential election campaign to replace him.
Republican Donald Trump, now his party's presumptive nominee
for 2016, has attacked the TPP and describes the tripartite
North American Free Trade agreement as a disaster that needs to
be renegotiated or broken.
In the Democratic campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders has
opposed the trade deal, and Democratic front-runner Hillary
Clinton has also expressed concerns.
Canada sends 75 percent of its exports to the United States
and would suffer greatly if a future president moved to clamp
down on free trade.
Trudeau, asked how he would deal with a President Trump,
said the leaders of both countries would always agree on the
need for growth and prosperity. One important way to achieve
this was through trade, he added.
"The level of integration between the Canadian and American
economies is unlike anything else ... in the world," he told a
news conference in Ottawa.
The last "Three Amigos" summit was in Toluca, Mexico in
2014. Canada was supposed to host the meeting early last year
but canceled it amid tension between then Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline.
Obama will address Canada's Parliament during the visit, the
White House said. He last came to Canada for a bilateral visit
in February 2009, the first foreign trip of his presidency.
Ottawa's relations with Mexico are strained over Canadian
rules, introduced under Harper, that impose visas for visiting
Mexicans. Trudeau said he hoped to be able to announce within
weeks that the requirement would be scrapped.