Today the Prime Minister might be announcing that Canada has been invited into the Trans Pacific Partnership talks, which are forming a mega free trade zone that Canada badly needs to get into. We’re a trading nation. We have always been so. The TPP contains some of the most important growing markets on the planet. (UPDATE: Canada has indeed been invited into the first stage of TPP acceptance.)
Since the U.S. gets to say “Yea” or “Nay” to our accession to the club, they are predictably acting like the big bully in the playground. There’s an excellent summary of the American approach here in today’s Globe and Mail.
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Yup, we need to rely on the Americans for some friendly neighborliness and good-buddy support, and they try to squeeze us yet again. This predictably gets my back up, bringing back all sorts of historical resentments, such as the Burning of York (Toronto) during the War of 1812, and also reminds me of personal degradations, such as the time in Grade 5 when my classmates Andrew, Chris and Shelly refused to let me join their gang. (I might get over the former at some point in the future, but never the latter.)
Ag trade is not only a piece of the cudgel the Americans are wielding against us, but it has been in fact part of the hard wooden core of their weapon during recent TPP negotiations. Unsurprisingly it’s supply management that is one of the things that annoys the Yanks the most about us, as it is the structure that always draws a few countries’ ire at trade negotiations. (Copyright protections are also a touchy subject and getting more attention this week, but supply management is always there in the background.) But the U.S. National Pork Producers Council has piled on with demands that two provincial programs in Ontario and Quebec be dumped before Canada is allowed into the TPP.
This is what I wrote about in my last blog post, and it is unfortunate for us that the Americans might have a point about the two programs, even if they are not having any real impact on cross-border trade. U.S. pork sales to Canada are surging, and the Canadian herd has shrunk 20 percent in the past few years, so it’s hard to argue that we’re flooding the U.S. market with Canadian pigs and pork because of the programs. But it’s worrisome if we’re giving the big bruiser to the south any semi-legitimate excuse to take a whack at us.
I was speaking with the Canadian Pork Council yesterday and while they don’t take a stand on the Ontario and Quebec programs, they prefer income support programs to be nationwide rather than provincial and to be carefully vetted so they cannot be accused of being trade distorting and bringing on another border war. That seems pretty sensible to me. Why give the big, rich guy to the south an excuse to take a run at us? In an age when things like Country of Origin Labeling have severely damaged us, we need to act like good little boy scouts just to avoid facing more beatdowns. It’s not fair how we often get treated, but who said it was a fair world?
But we’ll always have to face belligerence from the U.S., regardless of how nicely we behave. The power and population differential is just too great for them not to use it, and for us to live in fear of.
When I was down in Des Moines, Iowa, for the World Pork Expo a couple of weeks ago I heard lots about the allegedly offending Ontario and Quebec programs, and that seemed a reasonable thing to be arguing about. But I was taken aback when an American hog industry leader also complained to me about various provincial governments making natural gas connections available to farmers. This seemed an outright subsidy to him.
To me it just seems like good public policy. Isn’t that what governments are for? The government creates the basic infrastructure and businesses pay for their use of it and for the cost of what it provides. Isn’t that just “Peace, Order and Good Government?” Oh, right, the Americans never signed-on to that approach . . . One of those 1776 differences.
Apparently in North Carolina most of the hog farms don’t have natural gas lines anywhere near them, so they truck-in propane, which is more expensive. To me the answer isn’t to blame Canada and call natural gas lines a subsidy, but to get backward-butted state governments to do sensible things like building natural gas lines. Perhaps that would be seen as outrageous socialism down there.
Regardless, it made me think about our anxious and fraught relationship with the U.S., and how we’ll always be batting away allegations of unfair trade from a market we’re utterly dependent upon. It’s just our lot in life, it seems.
Today we might hear that the Americans are going to graciously not block our accession to the TPP. That’d be nice. And would be a sign they’re not really bullying us, just playing a pressure game while they have us over a barrel. To them, it’s probably no big deal.
But once more it stirs those terribly anxious, resentful and threatened feelings that slop around at the bottom of many Canadian hearts like mine.
