Fine-Tuning Trade

An enduring feature of Canada’s history and development has been the desire to shape an identity along east–west lines when the forces of economic gravity align in a north–south direction. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of trade. Historically over three quarters of Canada’s trade has been with the United States, although the numbers themselves are less important than what they represent. Canada, the textbook small open economy, which must rely on exchange with the outside world to export what it makes best and import the rest of its needs, frequently finds itself seeing the U.S. and the rest of the world interchangeably. Generations of Canadians are schooled in the details of the Auto Pact, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Any developments on the Canada-U.S. trade front, as witnessed most recently by comments on NAFTA by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the presidential primary season and by John McCain’s...