{"id":80846,"date":"2025-08-19T09:33:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80846\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:33:47","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:33:47","slug":"canadas-trade-strategy-suffers-from-delusions-of-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80846\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s trade strategy suffers from delusions of friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A child reaches for a Canadian flag on Canada Day in Vancouver.ETHAN CAIRNS\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.<\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Doug Ford<\/a> recently declared on CNN<\/a> that in Canada, U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> is the \u201cmost disliked politician in the world . . . because he has attacked his closest family member.\u201d In January, just before Mark Carney<\/a> announced his leadership bid for the Liberal Party, he appeared on The Daily Show and told<\/a> Americans that Canada and the United States could be \u201cfriends with benefits.\u201d Are prominent U.S. leaders making time for media appearances to defend Canada as their \u201cclosest family member\u201d?<\/p>\n

Believing that trading partners are family, or friends even, betrays our leaders\u2019 wide-eyed view of the world that not even historical precedent appears able to shake. It has invited complacency and deepens the damaging economic consequences when trade relationships evolve or break apart.<\/p>\n

If there is one long-term takeaway for Canadian leaders from Mr. Trump\u2019s assault on Canada\u2019s access to U.S. markets, it\u2019s realizing that countries we trade with are neither family nor friends, but jurisdictions that do business with us \u2013 business that is transactional, situational and evolving.<\/p>\n

We have had Donald Trump-like figures before who upended our economy and who we should have already learned this lesson from. One of the first was Robert Peel, who was the British prime minister between 1841 and 1846. Unlike Mr. Trump, he was a protectionist-turned-free-trader.<\/p>\n

In 1842, he cut tariffs on British timber imports that gave Canadian timber preferential access to British markets. Consequently, our timber exports fell. In 1846, Mr. Peel dropped Britain\u2019s protectionist tariffs on grain, ending Canada\u2019s preferential grain market access that had been in place since 1815. <\/p>\n

Lumber producers praise federal plan to diversify markets amid trade war with U.S.<\/a><\/p>\n

Three years later, Canada\u2019s then Governor-General, Lord Elgin, reported<\/a> that property in Montreal and \u201cin most of the Canadian towns . . . had fallen by 50 per cent in value\u201d and that \u201cthree-fourths of the commercial men are bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1854, the search for a market to replace lost share in Britain was secured through a reciprocity deal with the U.S. that removed duties on fish, timber, coal and grain just as railways began to boom in Canada, opening more efficient transportation routes to move Canadian goods south. The good times lasted 12 years.<\/p>\n

U.S. President Andrew Johnson cancelled the trade deal in 1866, given growing protectionist sentiment in the U.S. and popular belief that the deal was benefitting Canadians more than Americans. The abrogation of the 1854 trade agreement helped cement efforts to create what we now know as Canada through Confederation in 1867, a project that was expected to create one national economy to help compensate for lost trade with the U.S.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s interprovincial trade barriers measure the success of that intention.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of other past examples. The U.S. Fordney-McCumber Act in 1922 slapped an average 40-per-cent tariff on imports. This was followed by the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, and in 1971, President Richard Nixon\u2019s administration imposed a 10-per-cent tariff on many Canadian goods crossing the border.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Ottawa can\u2019t let our canola industry \u2013 a true Canadian success story \u2013 fade away<\/a><\/p>\n

The present isn\u2019t any friendlier than the past. Last week, China took hostage Canada\u2019s multibillion-dollar canola export trade, imposing 75.8-per-cent duties<\/a> on Canadian canola seed. This is a transparent attempt to force the federal government to backtrack on Ottawa\u2019s 100-per-cent tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles.<\/p>\n

Equally transparent is China\u2019s goal of crushing our EV sector through the sale of cheap EVs produced using low-wage work, heavily subsidized, stolen or misappropriated IP, and as Human Rights Watch has documented<\/a>, forced labour.<\/p>\n

Canada has negotiated many trade agreements with other countries, yet, those deals are often more sizzle than steak. As trade experts noted<\/a> earlier this year in Policy Magazine, \u201cToday, Canada has more comprehensive trade agreements than any other G7 country. But having a trade agreement is one thing; leveraging it is another. Utilization rates of these agreements have remained low. . .\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2017 Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is an example. It has yet to win full ratification by all EU member states. The obstacles are material. Differing approaches to environmental, agricultural and digital regulations and standards are persistent barriers. The Europeans seem not to care, given all the Canadian interprovincial trade barriers that also complicate EU trade with Canada.<\/p>\n

In Britain, objections to Canada\u2019s dairy and supply management systems as well as rules of origin closed the doors on free trade. Trade negotiations with Britain collapsed in 2024.<\/p>\n

The world isn\u2019t made up of countries that want to trade with Canada because they are our family or friends. It\u2019s comprised of countries who only value how Canada can serve their economic needs and political agendas. It\u2019s time we admitted to that reality. Doing so will at the very least reduce the shock when trade deals go sideways.<\/p>\n