LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
JUNE 2017 57
| INTERNATIONAL TRADE |
Similarly, the analysis must discount
the false comfort some have taken from
Trump's focus on Mexico only to discover
in his relatively recent remarks to Wiscon-
sin farmers that he has Canada's dairy sup-
then, and the likelihood that some form of
free trade agreement will remain in place
between Canada and the United States,
Canada will likely remain a viable and at-
tractive springboard for companies seek-
ing to access our southern neighbour's
enormous markets. "Foreign businesses
have long used Canada as a beachhead for
entering the US market," says Woods, who
spent two decades in government as a trade
commissioner and negotiator. "at role
has never been more important as Euro-
pean and Asian businesses try to find a way
into that market that doesn't rely on broad
multinational agreements."
On this analysis, CETA, of course, is
huge. "e EU is the largest single market
in the world and the single most impor-
tant market aer the US, and Canada is
the only country in the world to have such
an agreement as deep, complex and broad
as CETA with the EU," says Cliff Sosnow
in the Toronto office of Fasken Martineau
Dumoulin LLP. "Japan and Australia are
also trying to negotiate something with the
EU, but they're playing catch-up, so right
now Canada does have a leg up on the rest
of the world."
But there's a problem: Canada has not
been taking full advantage of its trade
agreements. "One of the things we've
missed out on is being strategic," Woods
said. "Canada's tendency has been to get
into a bit of a rut by negotiating agreements
and then stopping right there."
What Canada needs to do, Woods main-
tains, is to ensure that government works
with the private sector to highlight the
advantages a particular trade agreement
brings to specific sectors and
regions. "We've been heavily
influenced by the American
laissez-faire approach, so the
idea of government and the
private sector working to-
gether to develop trade goes
against the grain of the last
20 years of Canadian politi-
cal history.
"We need to compete,"
says Woods, "to have bums
in seats, airplanes going over, and people
actively seeking markets and investors in-
stead of just assuming that a trade agree-
ment automatically means we'll be wel-
comed with open arms."
ply management system, sowood lumber
industry and energy sector in his sights,
and that his support for "Buy America"
does not appear to have wavered. It should
also discount the indications that the na-
tionalists who surrounded Trump at the
outset — particularly Stephen Bannon,
recently demoted from his post on the Na-
tional Security Council — appear to have
lost some of their influence, at least for the
time being.
There are four pillars intertwined in
any construct devised to assess the oppor-
tunities that the Trump era opens up for
Canada on the international trade front.
ese are NAFTA; the Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)
with the European Union, ratified by the
House of Commons in February and cur-
rently before the Senate; the aermath of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and Cana-
da's relationship with China.
NAFTA is relevant to the discussion not
only because of the potential changes to the
agreement, but because a free trade agree-
ment with the US will almost certainly
continue to exist in some form. "We have to
put all this in context, and remember that
this isn't the first time that presidents or
presidential candidates have threatened to
pull out of NAFTA," says Brenda Swick of
Dickinson Wright LLP in Toronto. "ere
were heated debates between Clinton and
Obama about disowning the agreement
unless changes were made, and George W.
Bush did the same thing."
Given President Trump's consistent
stance against multilateral agreements,
BRENDA SWICK
>
DICKINSON WRIGHT LLP
"We have to put all this in context, and remember
that this isn't the first time that presidents or
presidential candidates have threatened to pull
out of NAFTA. There were heated debates between
Clinton and Obama about disowning the agreement
unless changes were made, and George W. Bush
did the same thing."
