Tag Archives: nafta

Like all sensible folk I was myself opposed to the NAFTA at the outset, convinced that it did more for the corporations than for the rest of us. I’m still of that view. Is it possible that the biggest change that is now taking place is in the name itself, from NAFTA to USMCA- perhaps done so that Trump can boast that he delivered on his promise to get rid of NAFTA? A number of commentators on both sides of the CanAm border have written, in the words of John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail,...

The provincial election of June ended 15 years of Liberal electricity policy in Ontario. Anger over high electricity prices continued to be an election issue, contributing to the Liberal loss of power and official party status (reduced from 55 to 7 seats). The PCs have formed Government with 76 seats, while the NDP is official opposition with 40 seats, and the Green Party won their first seat. The PC Government has moved quickly to act on some of their election promises and other unannounced...

So is Mexico so eager to open talks with the U.S. on NAFTA if it was “the worst deal ever approved” by Washington? A deal that was helping Mexico get one over on their neighbors to the north. The answer likely has something to do with the devastation that neoliberal “free trade” brings with it wherever it goes.  Like most countries before they embraced neoliberalism, Mexico before NAFTA was once home to a diverse and robust domestic agricultural sector, less reliant on imported food and...

Stephen Clarkson: Political Economist with a Global Vision (1937 – 2016) Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Daniel Drache Stephen Clarkson died early in 2016 in Freiburg, Germany and Canada lost someone very special. Stephen was a Professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto and engaged in teaching, research and writing until his death. He has contributed, in an extraordinary way, to the public understanding of Canada and North America in the 20th and 21st centuries, Europe in the...

To read the media today, one would think that NAFTA is a keystone of Canadian prosperity and that renegotiation could lead to a national economic disaster. That view has already been rebutted in a report by Scott Sinclair for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He finds that a reversion to WTO tariffs and trade rules would have only a modest impact, albeit that some auto and agricultural exports would suffer. The key take-away is that we can afford to walk away from a bad deal if...

I recently spoke at the Standing Committee on International Trade on their study “Priorities of Canadian Stakeholders having an interest in Bilateral and Trilateral trade in North America, between Canada, United States and Mexico”.  I share my notes with you here, although I did ad-lib a bit in the actual committee meeting. ********************** The labour movement is keenly aware that trade is, and always has been, an important feature of the Canadian economy. Many of our jobs depend on...

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To all who argued the financial world would’ve collapsed without the bailouts: The political world is collapsing now because of the bailouts — Emanuel Derman (@EmanuelDerman) June 25, 2016 The bigger picture of the early 21st century follows: Western nations experienced a massive blowout bubble of leverage, irrational exuberance, and Hayekian pseudo-money creation. Yet this money was not going to overwhelmingly productive causes. The real output of the Western world did not follow...