A friend directed my attention to this National Post editorial on the recently announced Canada-EU bilateral free trade negotiations.
The free trade announcement was somewhat under the radar due to, well, some big supposedly-free market collapsing. “Free trade,” seems to have become secret code for “bad news for people.” I’d argue especially so when the National Post is talking about it.
And it’s not just the Post’s editorial board who’s atwitter. Andrew Coyne called this development “…huge. Huger than huge. Hugeastic. Hugeriffic:”
Understand what this means. If we pull this off, then Canada would be the only developed country (Mexico has its own deal) with guaranteed access to both the European Union and the United States — the two richest markets in the world, with 800 million consumers between them. Locating in either the US or the EU would give a firm guaranteed access to only one. Only by locating in Canada would they get both.
Does “free trade” get a second chance?
Still, Canadian nationalist-types (Harperites included) and “independence from American economic tyranny”-types (Harperites not included) will likely find some shared interest in this initiative.
Myself, I’d like to see our economic resiliency and GPI (genuine progress indicator) growth come from developing our domestic economy and internal trade, while building self-sufficiency from innovation and systems change. In the meantime, we need to reduce our dependence on the shit-parade towards economic fascism underway in the US and the less progressive BRIC “tigers” (Brazil, Russia, India, China). A bilateral Canada-EU trade agreement is a good start.
The inability to manage the 21C-corporatism of the United States and its business partners with the starving, drowning, sickly mass of working peoples has, obviously, stalled wider free trade talks. Yet, the suffering of all people under the yoke of 21C-imperialism may be Canada’s gain.
In beautiful Post prose:
[...] with the collapse this summer of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, Canada has suddenly been thrust into the EU spotlight. EU trade experts, led by new Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, are coming to grips with the notion that the continued expansion of free trade will have to be carried out in painful bilateral steps, rather than in one orgasmic, globe-girdling moment of concord.
Canada must do what it can to weather the coming storms. A stronger trade relationship with the European Union could help us find our footing as our “friends” to the south move past hegemony and towards decline. Mismanaged, it cements our position as a colonial holding of ideological globalists.
NAFTA will inevitably be opened up and when it does Canada will be well-served by having stronger non-US trade relationships to counter-balance a threatened and threatening United States.
The Post describes the affair as bet-hedging:
Probably no one in Canada needs to be talked into seeing the advantages of a solid labour-mobility deal with the Continent. With the U.S. dollar and the Euro now established as the world’s two overwhelmingly significant stores of value, increasing the share of our international trade destined for Europe, which has dwindled in the NAFTA era, would provide a useful hedge against relative fluctuations in the two currencies.
The EU, however, is now an imposing force in world economic affairs. The need for labour and skills mobility is becoming a legitimate and deafening chorus. Still, it would be foolish to think this would be a panacea to our softwood-water-health care type problems with the US.
Tainted Maple Leaf meat to be the new softwood lumber?
The EU, like the US, has expectations for its Western trading partners. In contrast to the US, these concessions may include more regulation around safety and toxicity in industry, social service and labour mobility, adherence to climate change treaties, and — gods forbid — food safety and labeling. Or, of course, they could result in the fire sale of Canadian businesses and a loss of self-determination at the ink-stained paws of the bureaucratic supra-state. Not dissimilar to criticism heard throughout EU-integration generally.
These negotiations could provide the opportunity to re-imagine bilateral trade between developed states in the wake of our ongoing NAFTA disaster.
CAUTION, of course: A Harper government (or a Liberal one, for that matter) cannot be trusted to negotiate any agreement in the interest of Canadians behind closed doors with only Friedmanite MBA executives to guide them.
I’ll do my best to follow these negotiations and Canadians should, too; trade agreements tend to be undemocratic affairs for some reason.
For now, I’ll join the Council of Canadians in their call to open up the text of the draft agreements before the election.
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