Search

Search results

1. A split Congress may increase uncertainty surrounding Canada’s trade environment

   This week’s midterm elections in the United States were the most expensive (in terms of candidate expenditures) and featured the largest voter turnout for any midterm election in U.S. history, as many observers saw it as a referendum on ...

2. New trade pact mixed bag for Canadians

   The long-running soap opera that was the NAFTA renegotiations has ended—at least for now. At the last minute before President Trump’s September 30 midnight deadline, Canadian and U.S. negotiators finalized an agreement that expands an ...

3. In the evolving trade debacle with the U.S, Ottawa must act

   The outlook for ongoing NAFTA negotiations grows dimmer by the day, notwithstanding the conciliatory statement by Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known colloquially as AMLO). In a recent interview after exit polling ...

4. Withstand the trade war by trading more

   Canada and the United States are in a trade war. The ongoing drama of NAFTA negotiations, and the possibility that the current trade arrangements, may not continue raises an important question. What is the Trudeau government’s Plan B? ...

5. Canada, Trump and tariffs—a counterproductive and self-defeating quarrel

   President Trump’s recent actions have drawn widespread media attention to tariffs. Economic science provides an effective means of discerning the implications amid the hyperbole and rhetoric. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ...

6. The end of Trump-whispering

   I wrote in January about how economists, apart from warning about the consequences, don’t have an awful lot to say about how best to fight a trade war. Adam Smith himself wrote that such wars were a situation in which policy be left to ...

7. Steel, aluminum, tablecloths and NAFTA

   What do steel and tablecloths have in common? They are now products that are part of a dollar-for-dollar tariff war between the United States and Canada. They are also canaries in the NAFTA coal mine, signalling that the oxygen has ...

8. Ottawa should uphold the Constitution and create a true economic union

   While we have just celebrated the 150th anniversary of Confederation, the Canadian economic union is still nowhere near what was originally envisioned by the founders of the Canadian federation. Among the objectives of Confederation were ...

9. Trump favours tariffs, to the delight of U.S. companies

   Many observers believe that the ongoing “Montreal Round” of NAFTA negotiations, which started last week, represent a make-or-break moment for a “successful” renegotiation of NAFTA. Some reports say Canadian and Mexican trade officials ...

10. Is Canada’s latest NAFTA strategy too ‘insidious and crafty?’

    In Book IV, Chapter 2 of The Wealth of Nations, where he enumerates the benefits of free international trade, Adam Smith leaves only a tiny role for governments. He says the United Kingdom should support its merchant marine because ...