Search

Search results

1. Your trade war is my export opportunity

   Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is renowned for saying “your margin is my opportunity.” Canada and other countries may soon be in position to paraphrase Bezos’ iconic boast as an emerging trade war involving the United States and China creates ...

2. U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will apply to all countries including Canada

   Shakespeare immortalized March 15 as the Ides of March, the date of Julius Caesar’s assassination. President Donald Trump on March 1 stuck a knife into the world trade regime by announcing he would impose tariffs on imports of steel and ...

3. Memo for President Trump—Canada runs a trade deficit with the U.S.

   President Donald Trump issued a bizarre pronouncement this week—that Canada engages in smooth diplomatic trickery when it comes to trade relations with the United States. At a meeting with U.S. governors at the White House, the president ...

4. Some good news for Canada—the U.S. follows its own trade rules

   The initial U.S. Department of Commerce decision in October to levy tariff duties of almost 300 per cent on Bombardier’s CSeries jets sold in the U.S. became a major flashpoint in bilateral trade relations and cast an additional pall on ...

5. 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 ...

6. 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 ...

7. 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 ...

8. Exchange rates can overreact to news reports including NAFTA buzz

   This week a report stating that the Canadian government is increasingly convinced that President Trump will pull the United States out of NAFTA was credited with causing the Canadian dollar to drop from a closing value on Jan. 9 of US$ ...

9. An 1854 treaty and the lessons for NAFTA

   With the ongoing NAFTA negotiations and the possibility that the United States is going to leave NAFTA and usher in a new protectionist era for North American trade, it may be instructive to visit the past for some guidance. Canada’s ...

10. All our trade doors look unattractive now

    I’ve been reading a new paper by Oxford economic historian Kevin O’Rourke called Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period & Great Recession Compared, a title that, unlike many academic titles, pretty much catches what the paper ...