I suspect there’s a degree of slapback but what else is new? That happens in politics, on all levels. Power is a shifty, voracious beast. Anybody who overlooks that, for whatever reason, is a damned fool.
The ‘largest trading partner’ thing is always negotiable. Proximity has a lot to do with Canada’s relationship w/ the US but it’s an increasingly big, fluid ol’ world now. Bush flashdanced into a leading role on the world scene, thanks to a shamefully parochial, paranoid local constintuency. The hapless twit can’t even muster reasoned consensus at home, much less across the globe. So he’s using convenient geographic/historic tools as punitive measures. “Hey, Canada, lend face to my insanity or I’ll hurt you where you live.”
I don’t buy this line of reasoning at all. I mean, I’m sure that Carolyn Parrish has done nothing to aid the cause of the Canadian lumber industry, let’s be real here. The dispute over softwood lumber trade has been going on since 1982. Mulroney and Reagan got on famously, but that didn’t do anything to resolve the issue. Nor did good relations between Chretien and Clinton. The simple fact of the matter is that the issue is driven by the structure of the US Senate. The US lumber industry is concentrated in several smallish states, and small states have power out of proportion to their size in the Senate. That is the beginning and the end of the explanation for the US position on softwood lumber. If the US construction industry were concentrated in the same way, the matter would be resolved within days in some backroom Senate horsetrading. But construction, while vastly larger than forestry in the US, is spread out and doesn’t have decisive power in any one State, and hence doesn’t have as powerful a lobby. It’s a nice illustration of the downside to the non-proportional representation scheme.
I wouldn’t for a second suggest that our government’s lousy diplomacy is THE reason for this dispute. Not even a major one. As you say, it’s been going on a long time. It’s about nothing more than a bunch of politicians representing special interests haggling and fighting for them. It’s just that when the guy you’re negotiating with thinks you suck, he’s a little less likely to be reasonable.
I don’t think we should play nice, but I think the tactics should be different than just a straight up trade war that might encourage them to either raise more tariffs or attack us. I like the idea of finding a way to torpedo DR-CAFTA.
There’s a couple of easy solutions. The first is to stop shipping softwood lumber completely. Watch that U.S. housing boom crash!
While Paul Martin’s throwing easy money around to the provinces, he should instead throw some at business. The USA thinks Canada is illegally subsidizing industry, despite a raft of judgements? Fine, let’s really subsidize industry and turn it into a prefab market, so that when the U.S. recovers, the only thing they can get from us is prefab frames. No more 2x4s, sorry we don’t produce those anymore. Instead you can buy a whole damn raft of DIY houses, only minor assembly required in 4 handy-dandy sizes.
And forget slapping import taxes on OJ or wine. Stop American businessmen and tourists and the border. Search them all at length, tearing apart their vehicles if necessary. When they ask why, tell 'em that it’s because their senator and congressman voted in favour of the U.S. government stealing money from Cdn industry in violation of international trade agreements and court rulings. And then give them the number of their local rep.
It’s also a nice illustration of the upside that small states don’t get walked all over by the larger states. It’s one of the reasons I see the US system as more of a real federation than the Canadian system. Although, I like how the lower house of Parliament works in both the United Kingdom and in Canada, I recognize that applying that rule to the upper house of the United States Congress is not workable.
Except that the policy of softwood tariffs hurts the US economy far more than it helps it. There are something like 25 jobs in lumber-using industries in the US for every 1 job in the lumber-producing industry. (Read that in an editorial somewhere recently, don’t recall which paper but it was a reputable one. Maybe even WSJ.) Guess what a 27% tariff on imported softwood does to lumber-using industries? Think what the housing boom would look like without this artificial brake on it.
Sure, there are upsides to the non-proportional Senate representation, but this doesn’t illustrate any of them. This just illustrates the undemocratic nature of setup.
Or it demonstrates the democratic republican nature of our set-up. We are kind of into the whole “no dictatorship of the majority” thing, after all. I suppose that’s why we have the Senate as a fundamental and very involved part of our national legislation. Speaking of undemocratic, how’s the House of Lords populated?
I see that our Executive Department makes good calls occasionally and bad calls occasionally. Hey, sometimes they make each of them often! But to completely disenfranchise whole segments of the United States over one issue is not a good idea.
House of Lords? There’s no House of Lords in this country. Our Senate is rather undemocratic, being an appointed body, but as it has scarcely more power than the Governor General that’s a moot point.
I guess I’m just baffled by why you’d think that a minor industry convincing the rest of the country to break a treaty with your largest trading partner when doing so even absent retaliation is bad for the country as a whole is an example of avoiding the tyranny of the majority. It seems like a prime example of the evils of special interest groups wielding disproportionate power to me.
Sure - there have been court cases where First Nations have won claims against Canadian governments, both federal and provincial. And then you know what happened? The governments paid up, or modified their laws to accord with the judgment. I am not aware of any case where either the federal or provincial governments lost a case and then simply ignored it. If you can provide a cite to the contrary, I’d be very interested to see it.
But that’s not the point of this thread. I don’t read the OP as saying Canada will always be in the right, and the US always in the wrong. That would be a silly, nationalistic fantasy which wouldn’t be worth replying to. Rather, the point is how to resolve trade disputes, and the committment of both parties to the dispute resolution process.
When you have a treaty, whether with the US or the First Nations, there will inevitably be differences in interpretation of the mutual rights and obligations. Each party may have its own take on the agreement, in all good faith, based on their own understanding of the agreement and their own interests.
That’s why you have a dispute resolution mechanism, such as arbitration, or a NAFTA panel. But when the dispute resolution process rules against you, you don’t just say, “That’s all well and good, but we’re not complying with the judgment. Let’s negotiate a solution.” We did negotiate a solution, years ago. It was the NAFTA process. Both nations agreed that instead of trying to negotiate settlements to problems on a case-by-case basis, we both commit to a set of trading rules, with a dispute resolution process for those cases where we did not agree on the effect of those rules.
It is that dispute-resolution process which the US is now refusing to honour. The US Ambassador is essentially saying that we should ignore that process and go back to case-by-case negotiations.
If the US only complies with the dispute resolution process when it rules in the favour of the US, why should we have a NAFTA deal at all?
I think that this is pretty close to the truth. It seems that the US (administration, trade negotiators) have the idea imbedded in their heads that nobody can out produce or out compete the US in anything. If a country can out produce or out compete the US it is clearly the result of government subsidies.
Here is a history of some trade disputes between Canada and the US. Most involve US action to protect an industry in the US with tariffs.
The recent talks on FTAA have ground to a halt, probably because free trade sure doesn’t seem to equal fair trade.
Thought some people might be interested in a slight hijack.
I’m doing research into the teaching of economics in American schools in the period since World War II. One aspect of the project is looking at state mandates for the teaching of economics. In the 1960s through the 1980s, quite a few states introduced legislation making the teaching of some type of economics compulsory in the high school curriculum. Sometimes this legislation specified that “economics” should be taught; other times, the subject specified was “free enterprise”; and on other occasions, it was “consumer education.”
Sometimes, in the debates over these issues, you can see the same sort of hypocrisy or inconsistency that we are discussing in this thread.
For example, in the mid-1970s, North Carolina made the study of “free enterprise” mandatory in the state’s schools. The initial proposal’s definition of “free enterprise” had quite a free market emphasis, which is about what you’d expect. But then some North Carolina legislators started worrying about their pork barrel constituencies, and one representative suggested an amendment that:
The ironies of self-interested legislators know no bounds.
You’re not serious, are you? You thnk there’s even a remote chance that the U.S. would invade Canada? That will never, ever happen. At least while both governments remain roughly similar in structure to what they are today. Maybe if Canada suffered a coup and some military junta took over (also unthinkable), or the U.S. devolved into a fascist authoritarian state or something (also unthinkable).
And before we go throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we have to remember that Free Trade is a very good thing for us. DR-CAFTA is a good thing for us. NAFTA is a good thing for us. What we want to do is to get the U.S. to live up to those agreements - not to destroy them.
This is exactly correct. That’s why I like the export tax on energy idea - because it demonstrates like nothing else why the US should prefer the rules of NAFTA as well. I do worry that it’s excessively provocative, but it still seems the best option to me.
Another thing we should be doing a lot more is soliciting the aid of anti-protectionists in the US. The construction industry might not have the focused lobbying ability of the forestry industry, but they’re still a significant group. We could help and encourage them to make more noise. Consumer groups. I’m sure Home Depot would prefer to have lower lumber prices. But the fundamental problem is that the harm of the tariffs to Americans is diffuse, which makes using that harm to generate opposition difficult.
There’s no House of Lords in this country. Our Senate is rather undemocratic, being an appointed body, but as it has scarcely more power than the Governor General that’s a moot point.
