{"id":98365,"date":"2025-01-09T14:51:04","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T19:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=98365"},"modified":"2025-01-09T14:51:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T19:51:04","slug":"opinion-blayne-haggart-discusses-lessons-from-past-u-s-canada-trade-crises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/01\/opinion-blayne-haggart-discusses-lessons-from-past-u-s-canada-trade-crises\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Blayne Haggart discusses lessons from past U.S.-Canada trade crises"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s threat of\u00a025 per cent tariffs against Canada\u00a0\u2014 combined with his\u00a0ongoing denigration of Canadian sovereignty, including his recent threat to take the country \u201cby economic force\u201d\u00a0\u2014 have Canadians rightly concerned about the immediate future.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the federal government\u2019s initial reaction to Trump 2.0 has not inspired confidence.<\/p>\n

The tone was set with what longtime Liberal strategist\u00a0Peter Donolo called\u00a0outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s \u201cpanicked \u2014 and degrading \u2014 pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s\u00a0$1.3 billion in border measures\u00a0\u2014 including \u201can aerial intelligence task force with more helicopters and drones\u201d and a \u201cNorth American joint strike force\u201d to fight organized crime \u2014 are, in a sense, even worse: answers to problems that exist only in Trump\u2019s fevered imagination.<\/p>\n

Bothered by the trade deficit<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Canadian officials certainly know, Trump\u2019s unhinged portrayals of illegal migration (up in recent years but far below the levels seen at the U.S.-Mexico border) and fentanyl imports (less than 20 kilograms of fentanyl in 2023 \u00a0intercepted by the United States at its northern border) are ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s actual problem is\u00a0reportedly the U.S. trade deficit with Canada\u00a0(also a manufactured problem that\u2019s actually a sign of American economic strength).<\/p>\n

These border policies are troublesome on their own. But they also won\u2019t buy peace because this isn\u2019t a policy discussion; it\u2019s an exercise in domination for domination\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

What will be sacrificed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Appeasement \u2014 figuring out Trump\u2019s price and paying it \u2014 will not work. It risks giving away the store. What will a Liberal or Conservative government sacrifice in the name of keeping the border open to commerce? How far is too far?<\/p>\n

A politics of appeasement will also poison the democratic wellspring. On every policy, Canadians will find themselves wondering whether their governments are acting in Canadians\u2019 best interests or in Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n

This is Canada\u2019s unenviable policy dilemma for at least the next four years: How to deal with an increasingly hostile U.S. while acting, and being seen to act, in Canada\u2019s best interests.<\/p>\n

Canadian policymakers need to figure out how to draw, and how to recognize, the lines between actions in the national interest and sovereignty-extinguishing appeasement.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, history does provide some guidance. This isn\u2019t the first time the U.S. has posed an existential economic threat to Canada. Two crises in particular, 136 years apart, offer important lessons for navigating the next four years, and even beyond.<\/p>\n

Lesson one: Always have a plan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our first lesson: Have many pre-existing plans.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks\u00a0against the U.S. permanently reoriented American views\u00a0on their two borders. Almost overnight, security became a paramount concern, displacing the then-prevailing ideology favouring open borders and cross-border trade.<\/p>\n

The threat to the Canadian economy was as clear then as it is now. All of a sudden, the U.S. was demanding that its two neighbours do something about the border. The only problem: the Americans didn\u2019t have a plan because, ironically, they hadn\u2019t previously paid much attention to border infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Canada, Canadian officials had been thinking a lot about how to modernize the border and had been pushing the U.S. to take border security seriously\u00a0for a long while. As a result, when the U.S. rediscovered its northern border, Canada had a policy ready to go.<\/p>\n

The resulting agreement, the\u00a0December 2001 Smart Border Accord, addressed both Canadian economic and U.S. security interests.\u00a0Key elements of the agreement\u00a0were based on proposals that Canada had been promoting for years.<\/p>\n

The federal government responded well to the 9\/11 shock because it had policies ready to go when they were needed. The governing Liberals had done the planning, which itself requires a strong sense of what\u2019s in the national interest.<\/p>\n

The Canadian and U.S. economies remain at least as entwined as they were in 2001. That means Canadian federal and provincial governments must arm themselves with non-improvised, made-in-Canada policies that will help ensure Canadian responses to imminent U.S. demands are done in the country\u2019s best interests.<\/p>\n

Lesson two: Focus on the homefront<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second lesson: Look east, west and north, not south.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve argued previously, Canada-U.S. interdependence, once our greatest strength, is now a gaping vulnerability.<\/p>\n

But, again, we\u2019ve been here before.<\/p>\n

In 1866, the U.S. abrogated the\u00a0Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty with British North America. Then, as now, the American economy exerted a strong gravitational pull on the northern British colonies.<\/p>\n

But that pull isn\u2019t a natural phenomenon; it\u2019s regulated by laws and treaties. Trade flows can be interrupted and laced with uncertainty. It was just such an interruption that in part spurred Canadian political leaders\u00a0to unite in Confederation, leading to the birth of Canada\u00a0in 1867.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tariff threat, like the events of 1866, should remind Canadians that access to the American market can be impaired or cut off; it can never be 100 per cent guaranteed. Now, as Canada did more than 150 years ago, the country must reinvest in building cross-Canada economic, political and cultural bonds.<\/p>\n

Particularly important areas are energy \u2014\u00a070 per cent of Ontario\u2019s natural gas in 2023 came from the U.S., complicating Canada\u2019s ability to play the energy trump card in Canada-U.S. negotiations; communication (including revitalizing the CBC and regulating online platforms), manufacturing and internal trade, each of which is essential to the ability of a state to self-govern.<\/p>\n

A path forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Canadian leaders, these history lessons offer a productive path forward. For citizens, they offer us a benchmark against which to judge our governments\u2019 dealings with the U.S.<\/p>\n

In our proposals to address U.S. concerns, look for evidence that they are the result of planning, that they promote Canadian interests and don\u2019t just respond to U.S. demands. Look also to the extent to which governments strengthen internal, domestic ties. These indicate governments are trying to promote the national interest.<\/p>\n

Following both lessons will require a degree of nation-building that Canadians haven\u2019t seen since the 1960s, significant state capacity-building and thoughtful, mature debates about what Canadians want their country to be. They also imply a degree of strategic thought that is currently hard to find in Canada\u2019s federal and provincial capitals.<\/p>\n

But they also have the benefit of being proactive, not reactive \u2014 of taking a situation not of Canada\u2019s own choosing and deciding what to make of it.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, recently published a piece in The Conversation about how lessons from the past could inform Canada’s response to Trump’s proposed trade tariffs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,38],"tags":[3445,4104,522,42,31,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98371,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98365\/revisions\/98371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}