So called free trade deals with the United States are worthless. Consider, Tom Walkom writes, the recently re-negotiated USMCA:
It has been under renegotiation since Trump became president in 2017. For Canada, these negotiations were seen as vital. Thirty years of free trade with the U.S. had served to restructure virtually the entire Canadian economy.
To Canadian business and government, a world without NAFTA seemed unthinkable.
And so we negotiated. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland negotiated. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau negotiated. Even former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was brought into help.
The good news was that not much changed. For the better, The Investor Dispute Mechanism was nixed. However,
the fatal flaw in the renegotiated pact was that, with one key exception involving the auto industry, it did nothing to prevent Trump or any other U.S. president from overriding NAFTA on spurious grounds.
Which is what Trump did last week. Citing the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that gives the president extraordinary authority during a crisis, Trump announced plans to levy tariffs on all Mexican goods entering the U.S.
The tariffs, which are to start at 5 per cent in June and rise each month until they reach 25 per cent in October, will continue until Mexico satisfies the White House that it is doing all it can to alleviate the “emergency” caused by the flow of migrants into the U.S. from Central and South America.
The implications of Trump’s latest move are far-reaching. What happens if this president, or a successor, decides that Canada isn’t doing enough to further some other bizarre element of U.S. policy?
New Yorkers have known for years that it's bad business to deal with Trump. Now, the rest of the world knows that it's bad business to deal with the United States.
Image: You Tube
4 comments:
As Rafe Mair said.
Beware of Sam Slick, the American trader.
World wide trade will never be the same again.
TB
Donald Trump's business career, TB, is littered with the debris of contractors who worked for him but never got paid.
Conservatives and libertarians used to worship at the altar of the Holy Contract. Now, government contracts and treaties aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal, Reagan's medium-range missile deal and NAFTA. One of Ford's first moves was to tear up a wind power contract and a deal with QC and CA on carbon pricing.
Now he's looking at coughing up millions to get out of a deal with the brewers, a move even the Chamber of Commerce opposes.
One of the things that used to separate mature democracies from banana republics was adherence to contracts signed by previous governments. So-called conservatives have tossed that idea out the window.
Cap
A democracy -- and a nation -- can't exist without respect for the rule of law, Cap. Contracts are the result of respect for the rule of law. Conservatives used to know this truth in their bones. The fact that they no longer know it tells you that they aren't conservatives -- no matter what they tell you.
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