Such challenges pose obligations, burdens, and expectations for countries like Canada that rely greatly on global trade for their economic growth and prosperity. Canada must prepare for an increasingly contested, complicated, and fractious global trade landscape that will only become more onerous to engage, negotiate, and leverage.

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First, U.S.-China security competition continues to cast a shadow over the trading system, affecting and rewiring regional economic partnerships. This seemingly persistent rivalry is compounded by muscular industrial policies from both countries and other powers (such as the European Union), further distorting trade patterns. Both ‘friend-shoring’ and ‘near-shoring’ could accelerate, despite constraints, with countries such as Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam benefiting disproportionately.

Yet, the adverse impacts could also be widespread, as this competition navigates terrains spanning semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), and electric vehicles. The battle for chip supremacy will reverberate across industries, affecting technological innovation and the climate transition. A potential restructuring of the global economy into blocs could reduce global GDP over the next few years.

Second, besides U.S.-China competition, other geopolitical fault lines (in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea) will further stress world trade. Trade between regions is slowing as intra-regional trade grows. Southeast Asia, in particular, continues to benefit from this dynamic, at least for now. U.S. tariffs and export controls are pushing multinational firms to relocate manufacturing from China to Southeast Asia, boosting foreign direct investment and creating more jobs.

Firms are pivoting by reconfiguring cross-border supply chains, lowering costs, rethinking business financing, localizing innovation in certain markets, reorganizing functions like hiring, reassessing their exposure to geopolitical hotspots, and developing new revenue streams. Risk management for firms will increasingly entail understanding how Indo-Pacific countries, historically not central to global trade, operate and move. Governments and firms must also internalize the notion that economic security is critical and craft a playbook that maintains and protects resilience given unpredictable geopolitical events.

Third, trade patterns, tensions, and preferences intersect, drive, and occasionally conflict with the unfolding energy transition as countries craft policies to mitigate climate change. Climate change is already affecting trade. Firms have to adopt low-carbon business models to become and/or remain globally competitive. Increasingly, sustainability will be commercially priced and included in the cost of doing business. New investment opportunities accompany climate mitigation. Some developed countries are strategically using trade-related environmental policies, littered with requirements to measure and verify the environmental footprint of imports.

These burdens fall on unprepared and unhappy trade partners. It will therefore be critical for governments, firms, and interest groups to share vital information with respect to compliance as policies like the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) become mainstream. The CBAM works like a tax on energy-intensive European imports to ensure domestic manufacturers who produce similar goods are not competitively disadvantaged given their higher domestic standards.

That said, measures like the CBAM could also spur — and provide advantages to — developing economies to decarbonize faster, seizing opportunities in low-carbon energy like green hydrogen, fertilizer production, solar panels, etc. Finally, trade will become crucial in enabling flows of critical minerals, especially given their geographic concentration, to facilitate the spread of clean energy technologies that address issues such as pollution, carbon emissions, and electrification.

Fourth, technology is both enabling and constraining global trade. Although digital technologies are a key driver of trade, most countries have yet to effectively regulate their domestic and external effects. Digital trade measures have to be aligned across borders; this issue will become more important as countries pass laws on issues like data, AI, cybersecurity, and digital competition, which could affect digital trade.

For developing countries to benefit from digital services, they should create and support digital markets and provide adequate policy support related to privacy, consumer protection, and cybersecurity as their firms digitize. Simultaneously, developing countries will have to support broad-based digitalization, connecting citizens who lack broadband access. AI is already speeding up trade processes; it can further simplify supply chain management by enhancing inventory planning, production, and distribution. AI could also transform logistics planning and services as they move to optimal areas given production.

What do these trends portend for global trade?

These four trends could fragment the global economy further, as links and connections attenuate between specific ‘blocs,’ not within. This situation will likely fuel ‘reglobalization,’ splintering the global economy into highly competitive regions where trade and investment are concentrated and trade rules are harmonized. Security tensions and macroeconomic difficulties are compelling countries to bank on regions being and becoming new trade hubs and corridors, rewiring supply chains in the process.

Trade diversification for security reasons is precipitating new regional networks between ‘trusted’ partners that share security and economic concerns. This reality could spell trouble for Canada, which seeks to balance relationships with countries and not tether itself to any one camp. Friend-shoring and near-shoring are changing trade structures as countries reimagine economic partnerships to mitigate various risks.

Firms also appear to be pivoting after being subjected to shocks from the pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, tensions in the South China Sea, and tariff rows between the U.S. and China. Countries like the United Arab Emirates and Singapore, which have solid and sophisticated trade infrastructures, will benefit.

Regionalization could thrive once again with potential costs and trade-offs for non-regional partners like Canada that appear strategically and institutionally distant. That Canada is reprioritizing trade within the Americas is positive, but that strategy must not come at the expense of deepening trade links in the Indo-Pacific.

The ‘choppiness’ of geopolitics is fuelled further by the recent industrial policies of China, the EU, and the U.S. Other powers, such as India, are still scarred by the pandemic, the ongoing climate crisis, and persistent supply chain difficulties. World Trade Organization rules have generally limited how countries use policies or subsidies to support specific industries within their borders to increase exports.

Yet, the selective application of these trade rules, due to China’s economic rise and experience, have altered the context around these efforts. National security considerations drive such policies given how specific goods and services can be weaponized by trading partners. According to Global Trade Alert, in 2023, countries used more than 2,500 policy interventions that were trade-distorting and discriminatory.

Considerations for Canada

What distinguishes this round of targeted interventions is that they are driven not by purely economic factors but a desire to strengthen resilience, protect national security, and advance climate mitigation. Resilience, rebuilding, bodog sportsbook review and sustainability are now key trade objectives. These massive interventionist efforts to revive and restructure specific industries are hard for countries like Canada, which has limited fiscal capacity, to match. Canada and other smaller economies will find such policies untenable and unaffordable and will have to rely on other measures to compete.

Where does this scenario leave trade-reliant countries like Canada? Besides deploying capital to help various strategic industries, Canada has to take the lead in drafting, negotiating, and mainstreaming new forms of trade agreements with other ‘likeminded’ trade partners, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and the U.K., as well as with developing countries including Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, and the Philippines, which find value in reviving and consolidating trade patterns.

Opportunities exist for these countries to drive trade initiatives now that the U.S., China, and the EU are disinclined to seek multilateral solutions to the trade challenges elucidated above. The U.S. has balked on trade given political difficulties while the EU’s trade and technology unilateralism sows resentment amongst its partners far and wide as they begrudgingly comply with European rules. China is not trusted to lead or drive multilateral trade solutions despite Beijing’s interest.

This situation generates space for other countries to explore newer agreements on trade issues like digital trade, green economy, and AI that advance mutual goals. Bilateral trade solutions such as the Australia-Singapore Green Economy Agreement (GEA) could serve as a viable template and example. Canada could benefit from such bilateral, open-ended, flexible agreements that facilitate green trade and investment across sectors to lower emissions.

The need to co-ordinate trade rules and standards is urgent with the regulatory demands for firms rising due to the extraterritorial effects of policies like the EU’s CBAM, General Data Protection Regulation, and EU Deforestation Regulation. Climate change and national security considerations have led to the proliferation of such measures. The competitiveness of firms and economies will become linked to the inking of coordinated trade rules and standards that help firms export goods and services.

Canada must deftly handle this complex landscape. Trade is no longer just trade; it is about establishing and correcting the conditions that enable countries to exchange goods and services and setting appropriate domestic rules to regulate problems and using those measures and market power to force compliance by other countries.

Trade, which plays a central role in Ottawa’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, relies on initiatives like trade missions, gateways, and agreements with India, Indonesia, and other Asian economies. These measures are necessary but insufficient for a region where trade is fundamentally strategic and inflected through issues like security, climate, and technological change. Canada’s trade policy must reflect and advance the ambitions of its climate transition, security concerns and interests, and technological strides. Anything less will not be fit for purpose.

To read the dispatch as it was published on the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada webpage, click here.

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Canada’s international feminism focuses heavily on integrating women in international trade. Development of women-run SMEs is a big focus. Unfortunately, Canada has overlooked a bigger issue. Its own protections against exports from heavily female industries in the developing world are some of the highest in the OECD. These industries are some of the highest value exports from developing countries to Canada, and Canada’s tariffs may suppress both trade-led growth and the wellbeing of millions of women in export-led industries in the developing world.

Canada has an opportunity to focus on the issue this fall. Its General Preferential Tariff (GPT) and Least Developed Countries Tariff (LDCT) are under review. Finance Canada is quietly consulting on what to do about least developed countries (LDCs) which could lose zero tariffs if they are graduated from the LDCT.  It is also proposing removing/graduating several other countries from GPT tariff preferences. The tariff reshuffle is triggered by UN reclassifications: Bangladesh, Nepal and Laos are no longer considered least developed countries. Several other countries have been graduated from lower middle-income status to upper middle-income status. If Canada follows international practice (it doesn’t have to), these graduations would maintain very high tariffs on exports from many developing countries and they could remove eligibility for zero-tariff treatment from others.

A tariff is a tax on imports. High tariffs can destroy whole industries by increasing prices on goods, rendering them uncompetitive in export markets. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s rapid-fire response to Trumpian tariffs of 10 per cent on aluminum and 25 per cent on Canadian steel exports to the U.S. was in response to that threat. Tariffs also increase prices for consumers and/or depress wages in producing countries. Trudeau’s response was also intended to address the prospect of lower salaries and living standards in Canada.

The Canadian tariff is mostly open to developing countries’ exports except for four areas: tariffs on supply managed products, dairy and poultry; random tariffs that protect specific industries; and high average tariffs (17 per cent) on goods from labour-intensive industries like textiles, apparel and footwear (TAF). There is also a new group of geopolitical tariffs that are intended to reverse China’s dominance over Canadian imports.

Exports from the female-staffed TAF sector are often among the highest value exports from developing countries to Canada. Exporting countries range from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia and Vietnam, to Peru, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Tunisia. Least developed countries Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia are eligible for zero tariffs as are Peru and Vietnam because of free trade agreements. However, exports from many other countries, e.g., Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, South Africa and Lebanon are subject to duties as high as 17 per cent. And Bangladesh, Nepal and Laos are about to be graduated from the zero tariffs of the LDCT.

In many countries, around 60-80 per cent of the workforce in TAF industries is female. There are centuries-old traditions of underpaying women in these sectors, because female labour was in olden times considered supplemental to male labour. Poor pay and other forms of mistreatment (poor working conditions, long working hours, sexual harassment and age discrimination) continue to be systemic throughout many TAF industries. If tariffs are high, producers will depress wages and working conditions to remain competitive in export markets.

About 65 million women work in the apparel sector in Asia, the highest employer of women in industry. In 2013, Maclean’s magazine noted that workers were paid 12 cents to produce a T-shirt sold for $14 in Canada. If the country is not an LDC, Canada’s tariffs will apply. A 17 per cent tariff on a T-shirt with an import price of around $5.69 may net the government over 96 cents in revenues. HST on the sale price of $14 nets the government another $1.82.

Half a century ago, these “pink tariffs” protected TAF industries in Canada from competition. They are no longer needed. Canada has labour shortages, not labour surpluses. Most TAF industries offshored by the 1990s to labour-surplus countries. Canada imports 95 per cent of its apparel. If necessary, the remaining highly specialized five per cent made-in-Canada products can be protected by tariffs on individual tariff lines. Budget 2023 claims that graduating countries will help Canada’s FTA negotiations. There is little evidence of that, and alternatives exist. And inflation post-COVID provides a strong economic rationale for reducing pressures on Canadian consumers by leaving LDC tariffs at zero while reducing the tariffs on non-LDC TAF imports.

Eons ago, the GPT (GSP in most other countries) was created to help newly independent developing countries gradually acquire market access to developed market economies. During colonialism, tariffs and taxes suppressed industrialization in many colonies, but not in all dominions. The destruction of the bodog casino 1,000-year-old cotton producing and exporting businesses in India by the imposition of high tariffs and taxes is an example. Cotton production essentially relocated to industrializing Europe behind high tariff walls. The chakra in India’s flag not only represents spirituality, but it evolved from a spinning wheel. One of India’s earliest nationalist struggles was to re-shore textile industries to India.

GPT/GSP schemes were flawed from the beginning because most did not address tariffs on TAF industries. For example, Canada never had a GPT on TAF; it had just a general MFN tariff of 17 per cent. Long after independence, tariffs and other trade restrictions in main TAF export markets remained high, either to protect labour in developed countries or to accumulate revenue for governments. In the developing world, they slowed down a critical part of the industrialization in the shift from agriculture to labour-intensive industries.

Consumers in Canada benefited from a 2003 preferential scheme for least developed countries that dropped tariffs to zero and substantially increased imports of TAF items from some LDCs. By 2017, Bangladesh and Cambodia (which is not yet up for graduation) cut into China’s dominance of the apparel market. They substantially increased their market share to 21 per cent of Asian apparel exports to Canada. Loblaw’s Joe Fresh line, for example, sources from Bangladesh. Finance Canada will consult on new tariff levels for graduating LDCs Bangladesh, Nepal and Laos, in fall 2023.

While LDCs face graduation to the GPT, another group of countries is up for graduation from the GPT. Guatemala, for example, is eligible. Despite an average 17-per-cent tariff on TAF exports, it has bravely grown these exports to Canada. Graduation from the GPT will simply maintain the 17-per-cent tariff against main Guatemalan exports to Canada. That makes little development sense. Guatemala badly needs more labour-intensive growth to address crime, drugs and illegal migration. Allowing TAF exports from Guatemala and similar countries to enter Canada at minimal or zero duties can help economic growth in exporting countries. It would be a win for both Canadian consumers and geopolitics.

While the UN deems graduating countries to be doing better, their TAF sectors rarely improve at the same pace as other sectors. UN classifications do not take inequality into consideration. Canada’s last GPT reform in 2014 used UN criteria to graduate 72 countries off the GPT eligibility list. According to a government spokesman, these countries were “booming and no longer underdeveloped” and didn’t need any more of Canada’s limited preferences. The 72 included Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, which were indeed booming.

However, the graduations also included South Africa, Jamaica, Thailand, Tunisia, Lebanon, Mauritius, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and the Caribbean small island states. These countries variously experience rampant inequality, youth bulges, nasty geopolitics, chronic unemployment and a lack of broad-based growth. Most have TAF export industries. None of them needed in perpetuity a 17-per-cent trade-stopping or wage-depressing tariff in labour/gender-intensive sectors. After that graduation, a range of non-TAF items from toothbrushes to bikes cost Canadians more. The government netted $312 million in revenues, a paltry contribution to an annual budget of $300 billion.

Finance Canada is proposing a GPT+ scheme similar to the EU’s scheme for graduating countries. It is consulting on a package: a lower tariff in exchange for the right to review labour and environmental standards in eligible developing countries. Graduating LDCs – Bangladesh, Laos and Nepal – are eligible for the scheme and, in a useful move, Finance has selected as eligible some lower middle-income TAF exporting countries: Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Egypt, El Salvador and Kenya.

If the proposed preferential tariff is anything higher than zero, it will have incremental costs to consumers and producers. Pakistan, Egypt and Sri Lanka all export apparel to Canada but so far, their exports are a small fraction of Bangladesh’s market share. Further, most exporting countries and SMEs develop industrial clusters by evolving along the TAF spectrum to footwear, headwear and other spin-offs. Non-apparel TAF goods appear to be excluded from the proposed preferential tariff and that exclusion could mean additional costs to Canadian consumers and businesses and continued low wages to workers. The average MFN tariff on footwear is around 18 per cent.

The existence of such high tariffs on heavily gendered industries, and the limited reforms under consideration, are simply inconsistent with Canada’s international feminist initiatives. A more useful approach would be to review the Canadian tariff from a trade and gender perspective with a view to dropping or eliminating most tariffs on TAF imports and maintaining the zero tariff on countries that already benefit from it. Canada could exclude from consideration any countries where there are geopolitical or human rights concerns.

Will low or zero tariffs benefit women workers in the developing world? Low tariffs may result in export-led growth but they do not necessarily translate into higher wages. Traditions of discrimination against female workers and the profit or taxation motives of global value chains and governments are too entrenched.

Stanford University researchers note that in Asia, workers’ single biggest concern is wages. Globally, only two per cent of garment workers make a living wage and most work overtime to make ends meet. Bangladeshi researchers confirm that growth gains in the sector have been achieved by workers putting in vast amounts of overtime. Even with record growth, profits to the industry can be siphoned off further up the value chain, including by governments. Female workers do not necessarily benefit from the growth process.

Responsibility for low wages and poor labour standards is shared between global value chains that often pressure manufacturers to lower prices, importing governments that impose high taxes and producing governments that turn a blind eye to repressive labour practices. Around 60-70 per cent of the value of an apparel item can be accrued outside the producing country in distribution, retail, marketing and taxes. If Canada chooses to initiate labour and environment reviews as conditions for lower tariffs, dialogue with producing-country governments (as per EU practice) is not enough. The CUSMA labour, gender and environment chapters are better alternatives because they do not place responsibility solely on producing countries. Instead, they make room for a whole-of-supply-chain dialogue with multinational corporations and importing and producing countries.

Sharing the responsibility could also provide options for cleaning up environmental pollution caused by TAF industries. And given the severe demand shock COVID-19 delivered to the TAF sector, (exports from LDCs are down from just under four billion in 2017 to just under three billion in 2022), an ILO-style dialogue between all participants along the value chain is long overdue. That dialogue should reach agreement on a quid pro quo on wages – lower tariffs in exchange for higher wages, and agreements to clean up environmental pollution. A real feminist initiative would be to begin an international consultation along these lines.

Canada’s current tariff policies are simply inconsistent with its trade-must-benefit- gender foreign policy positioning. Female workers, including workers in SMEs, which in developing countries tend to cluster around main export industries, need to benefit from international trade. Finance Canada’s proposed reforms go part of the way but there is much more to be considered. The consultations this fall need expert input, public discussion and parliamentary debate. It makes as much sense to ensure that Canada’s own trade policies are woke as it does to tell other countries how to do better.

Fauzya Moore is an Ottawa-based consultant and writer. She has worked as a Senior Economic Advisor at the various iterations of Global Affairs Canada, and also as a Senior Advisor on Governance at the Treasury Board of Canada. She most recently co-wrote the Asian Development Bank’s 2022 Global Aid for Trade Report. She is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School (2009) where she held both a Fulbright scholarship and a fellowship from the Ash Centre for Governance and Innovation. She has worked in both the developed and developing world.

To read the full commentary as it was originally published by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, please click here.

To read the full paper, please click here.

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Canada and Caricom’s commitment to forging new strategic partnerships to address climate change could not come at a more crucial time for the region. In a policy paper on Trade-Related Climate Priorities for Caricom at the World Trade Organisation (Dr Jan Yves Remy, The UWI SRC & TESS Forum 2023) Small Island Developing States including those comprising Caricom were recognised as especially vulnerable to global (climate-driven) shocks, despite their disproportionately low contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. The paper also notes that “natural disasters from climate change present a clear and present danger to Caricom economic activity”. These challenges are compounded by macro-economic pressures that hamper the region’s ability to develop its climate resilience. Trade and trade policies can be harnessed to drive climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

This SRC Trading Thoughts considers how trade rules could be leveraged to promote green industries, and highlights the possible components of a strategic “Green Free Trade Agreement (FTA)” between Caricom and Canada.

An opportunity to reignite trade negotiations between Caricom and Canada?

Negotiations between Canada and Caricom towards a reciprocal FTA were launched on July 1, 2007. This was intended to replace the existing CARIBCAN preferential trade agreement which has been in existence since 1986, and provides duty free access to the Canadian market for certain goods of Caricom origin. As of May 2015, Canada’s position on the reciprocal FTA negotiations was that “(g)iven the lengthy negotiations and that Canada and Caricom continue to have different objectives for a Canada-Caricom trade agreement, no additional negotiations are planned at this date”. In the context of Canada’s renewed commitment to climate-related strategic ventures in the Caricom region, including its vocal support for the Bridgetown Initiative and pledged funding to tackle the climate crisis in the Caribbean, there are favourable diplomatic conditions for revisiting the idea of a Canada-Caricom FTA.

Canada’s trade priorities include “contributing to a rules-based international system that advances Canadian interests” by “fostering co-operative multilateral action and pursuing new and innovative partnerships with a focus on… climate change and environmental protection”. While a formal articulation of Caricom’s trade priorities, in particular as it relates to climate change, is less readily available, Caricom leaders at the Heads of Government Conference “recognised that the impact of Climate Change and other exogenous shocks were having a debilitating effect on Small Island and low-lying coastal Developing States (SIDS) as well as other vulnerable developing countries, and that there was an urgent need to provide macro-economic security, resilience and sustainability for our countries”. Caricom and Canada therefore have a common strategic interest in mutual partnership to address climate change and environmental protection. Revisiting the Canada-Caricom negotiations from the angle of a ”Green-FTA” could be part of Caricom’s response to the urgent needs triggered by the impact of climate change.

Where to begin?

Generally, trade agreements can promote green industries by removing tariffs and non-tariff barriers on green goods and services and improving access to climate related technologies. FTAs can also be used to incorporate environmental standards into trade agreements, and to embed environmental commitments such as those found in the Paris Agreement. Recent agreements also focus on sustainable production methods, sustainability criteria, and conditions of labour. FTA rules can also be used to incentivise environmentally friendly practices. For instance, trade agreements can provide preferential treatment for countries that adopt sustainable practices, or are in the process of transitioning to climate resilient economies.

An increasing number of FTAs include provisions addressing the environmental goods which are necessary for building climate resilient and climate responsive economies. Canada is a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and as such has established a list of environmental goods for targeted tariff reduction so that APEC businesses and citizens access important environmental technologies at lower cost, which in turn will facilitate their use and benefit the environment. Some of the environmental goods identified in APEC’s list which are relevant to Caricom’s own green transition include solar water heaters, solar photovoltaic cells, smart grid equipment and recycling machinery. Similar collaboration between Canada and Caricom to phase out or reduce tariffs on a list of environmental goods of mutual interest over an agreed timeframe, would lower the cost of importing these technologies into the region and potentially aid the region’s green economy transition, and would be an attractive market access proposition for Canadian manufacturers of environmental goods.

FTAs between Canada and other developing countries hint at opportunities for strategic collaboration between Caricom and Canada to address climate and environmental priorities. When Canada entered into an FTA with Honduras, the countries also entered into a parallel agreement on environmental collaboration. That agreement includes provisions which are relevant to Caricom’s efforts at climate change mitigation, adaptation and promotion of sustainable development. For example, Canada and Honduras committed to ensuring that their domestic environmental laws provide for high levels of environmental protection and continuing to develop those laws and environmental management systems, taking into consideration their respective levels of development.

The Canada-Honduras collaboration is a good example of the type of legal framework which could be adopted in a Canada-Caricom agreement. In the Caricom context, it would encourage the harmonisation of environmental laws across the region and potentially raise the level of environmental protection within individual member states, while providing a measure of flexibility appropriate to the realities of our small vulnerable economies. These commitments should be exempt from the dispute resolution provisions of the FTA. During the previous Canada-Caricom FTA negotiations, Canada expressed its intention to seek to negotiate a parallel Environment Agreement which would also address commitments not to derogate from domestic environmental laws to encourage trade or investment, compliance with and the enforcement of environmental laws, and promotion of accountability, transparency and public participation on environmental matters.

Looking beyond Canada and Caricom trade practice, the WTO has observed that an increasing number of FTAs contain provisions which address green issues. A non-exhaustive list of areas which are relevant to the Caricom region and could potentially be addressed in a Canada-Caricom Green FTA include public, private and civil sector participation in policy-making processes; transparency; remedies in environmental matters; biodiversity and traditional knowledge; patents and plant variety protection; sustainable management of forests and fisheries; trade in forest and fish products; energy and mineral resource management; clean energy; energy efficiency; natural disaster management and technical assistance and cooperation provisions aimed at supporting the implementation of some of the environmental provisions. A Canada-Caricom joint committee could be established to support these objectives by identifying areas of mutual interest from among these, and implementing appropriate measures and provisions.

The commitments expressed at the Conference of Heads of Government must now be translated into policy and action to secure a sustainable and prosperous future for the region. A Canada-Caricom Green FTA would promote sustainable development, protect the environment, stimulate economic growth, and support Caricom members to address their climate priorities.

Russell Campbell is a Research Assistant at the Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy and Services of The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

To read the full article, please click here.

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THE NUMBERS: 

Top six U.S. goods + services trade partners in 2021*  

* Estimates for services based on the nine months available data. Goods trade are full-year figures.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Then-President Reagan in September of 1988, eloquently closing as he signs the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement: “Let the 5,000-mile border between Canada and the United States stand as a symbol for the future. No soldier stands guard to protect it. Barbed wire does not deface it. And no invisible barrier of economic suspicion and fear will extend it. Let it forever be not a point of division but a meeting place between our great and true friends.” 

A generation into this future:  

(1) Canada accounts for a ninth of all U.S. goods trade and (with some uncertainty as final services data aren’t yet in) about a fifteenth of services trade. The total places Canada slightly ahead of Mexico and China as top trade partner, and thus as the largest single trade relationship in the world.  Matching this against history is tricky — should one compare last year’s $740 billion in U.S.-Canada trade to the $95 trillion in world GDP? To the $20 trillion in trade flows? To something else? But in the simplest sense, counting the nominal value of paper dollars or shiny loonies, last year’s U.S.-Canada relationship was the largest two-way trade relationship ever.

(2) Canada is the top U.S. export market for 29 states, and second-ranked for another 13. Canadians buy more American goods ($308 billion in 2021) than the 27 EU countries ($272 billion) combined; or, alternatively, nearly as much as China ($150 billion) plus Japan ($75 billion) plus Korea ($66 billion) plus Hong Kong ($30 billion) plus Taiwan ($37 billion). Only the U.K. is a larger buyer of American services. 

(3) President Reagan seems to have low-balled the border length a bit; by the International Border Commission’s estimate, it is 5,528 miles, including 4,000 along the “continental U.S.” northern border and 1,500 on Alaska’s western and southern frontier. Either way, as events elsewhere in the world continually remind us, a friendly, unguarded, border-cum-meeting-place, where the most troubling events are COVID-related tourism interruptions and temporary blockages of auto-parts shipments, is (a) a rarity in history, (b) something to greatly value, and (c) a heritage to protect.

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.  

To read the full commentary from the Progressive Policy Institute, please click here. 

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We are free-trade advocates who have seen and believe in the benefits of open markets. It is fair to say Canada has done very well competing internationally, probably because it had to. With a population of just 38 million, Canada needs to look beyond its borders.

The natural target for expansion has been the U.S. It is right next door, has no geographic barrier, speaks the same language and, until now, has demonstrated a willingness to consider the Great White North a kind of 51st state. But, boy, have things changed.

The collapse of the U.S. manufacturing sector has revitalized and now institutionalized the America First protectionist mantra. Many U.S. politicians have seized upon this and weaponized an anti-free-trade movement. Canada’s best trading partner has shifted sharply to a transactional, what’s-best-for-me attitude.

The cancellation of the Keystone pipeline extension and the protectionist measures in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better program are just a few of the latest signals alerting Canada it should not rely too heavily on its southern friend.

Canada’s approach to Asia has historically been one-dimensional. In the eighties and nineties, the focus was Japan, a consumer of our natural resources and a large investor, particularly in our automotive sector.

Since the beginning of the new millennium, Canada’s focus has been on China. Air Canada’s planes were full of government officials and executives seeking to invest in the next promised land and betting heavily on the creation of a free-market relationship with China.

And how has that worked out? Yes, China has become our second-largest export market – but it is still minuscule relative to our export dependence on the U.S. Today’s geopolitical realities will also limit interest and support for economic engagement with the soon-to-be largest global economy.

But Asia is a big place with many countries with large populations, young demographics and higher economic growth rates than ours. What is Canada doing to capitalize on its strengths and diversify its interests?

If there is a time for a well-articulated and coherent international trade strategy, it is now. COVID-19 has and will make it more difficult, but recognizing the need for a new global trade strategy that factors in current and changing realities is crucial. Countries around the world are all recalibrating their trade strategies, and Canada needs to do the same!

It will be imperative to engage a new generation of entrepreneurial business executives – many looking to build small and medium-sized enterprises to scale – in the development of a global trade strategy. They can best identify superior opportunities and key markets for Canadian products and technologies, and advise governments on the policies needed at the federal and provincial level to support and catalyze a global strategy.

Take India, for example, a market we both know well. China’s economic fortunes have changed dramatically in the last 30 years, but so have India’s. Since 1991, India’s GDP has increased tenfold. Billions of dollars of investments have been made in infrastructure that has transformed the look and feel of the country. Five hundred million people, through hard work and ingenuity, have pulled themselves up from poverty.

A nation that once restricted the number of computers allowed into the country is now the home of Tata Consultancy Services, the world’s largest software developer. TCS and other world-class companies are revolutionizing the technology people use every day. Each and every week, a new unicorn is born in India.

Large Canadian corporations such as the Brookfield companies, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., Bombardier Inc., Sun Life Financial Inc., McCain Foods Ltd., Teck Resources Ltd. and CPP Investments are making significant investments in India. They do this only because they see superior opportunities. Canada’s politicians talk about expanding commercial relations with India and, in speech after speech, all the right things are said.

But when you look at the actual numbers, Canada has clearly not benefited in any significant way from the enormous economic expansion that is taking place in the country. Trade with India is still a rounding error. Other countries have aggressively pursued business opportunities with India and reaped significant benefits. Why has Canada not capitalized more on this opportunity?

In developing a global trade strategy, it is important to identify the core strengths we have to offer and then adapt the strategy to those strengths, depending on the market. Again, consider India. What does Canada have to offer, and what does India need? As a rapidly developing country with a large population and a young demographic, India needs energy security, food security, investment dollars for infrastructure development and education.

Canada’s domestic policies constrain our ability to supply carbon-based energy commodities to India. But that does not restrict us from promoting and supporting globally leading, renewable and sustainable technologies in areas such as hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells, energy efficiency, solar and biofuels.

The same is true for food. Yes, we are the major supplier of pulse crops to India, but they are commodities, bought and sold through the global trading system. How we support our pulse exporters is and should be different from how we support companies that provide solutions in critical areas such as water – a scarce resource in India – or precision agriculture, which will increase the efficiency and output for the 750 million people in India bodog online casino who depend on farming for a living.

India cannot grow without investment. Canada is a global leader in pension fund investment and management. Our pension funds and our other large investors, such as Brookfield and Fairfax, have recognized the opportunity and have contributed to policy discussions that facilitate and encourage more investment in India. India sees Canada as a key partner in the pension space. So, what can we do to expand into other opportunities in the financial services sector?

When 50 per cent of your population is under age 25, education is a fundamental concern for India’s government and parents. Canada has benefited enormously over the past 10 years from the talented pool of Indian students who have chosen Canada as their education destination. Many of those students have remained in Canada and are contributing to our economic growth and social fabric.

But many have also returned to India. Are we thinking strategically about how we can use these young, dynamic professionals as a resource to promote our economic engagement with India?

Canada needs to develop and publish a new bold international trade strategy built on our strengths, aligned with our domestic innovation policies, and adaptable to the needs and requirements of our trading partners. It will be important to engage the Canadian business community in the process and, once the strategy is developed, provide the resources necessary to execute on it.

We have used India as an example, and anyone who has attempted to do business in India knows it is not easy. But if you look at India today and into the future, the economic opportunity for Canada is immense. Now is the time to aggressively and strategically diversify our trading relationships, not just with India, but with other high potential international markets.

Stewart Beck was responsible for Canada’s international business development, investment and innovation programs and is a former Canadian high commissioner to India. He recently retired as president and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Gary Comerford is president and CEO of CMC Global, a director on the board of Novelis Inc. and former general manager of the joint venture between Sun Life and Aditya Birla Group, one of the most successful business collaborations between Canada and India.

To read the full commentary by the Globe and Mail, please click here.

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Speaking on trade and gender, former-Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne once commented that “during a time of rising skepticism and protectionism, it is the time to evaluate whether more can be done.” There is, and the initiative needs to start at the border with Canadian tariffs. Because, unfortunately, some of Canada’s highest tariffs in an otherwise open customs tariff are against heavily gendered industries in the developing world. They represent “significant gender-related barriers, which limit or distort trade,” precisely the kind of barriers that the Government of Canada speaks against.

This is a problem both for Canada and the developing world. Canada’s main financing for a global feminist transformation is around $7 billion in annual official development assistance. This contribution is expected to introduce the world’s women to the middle class via a focus on agriculture and women as entrepreneurs.  Canada’s FIAP also calls for a great deal of reform in the social, legal and political sectors, all of which will need financing from somewhere. Unfortunately, $7 billion is a drop in the bucket in a world where over two billion women and girls live on less than $5.50 per day. By way of comparison, social-sector spending from Canada’s Department of Employment and Social Development alone totals around $70 billion per year for 38 million Canadians.

Further, Canada’s pro-feminist trade and development strategies tend to focus on discrete initiatives – financing for women’s entrepreneurship, focusing on agriculture and inserting gender chapters in Canada’s (few) free trade agreements with developing countries. These will help, but they won’t bring the growth that countries need to finance reforms. Canada needs to address wider, systemic issues, like the kind generated by its own tariff regime. It needs to focus on the kind of reforms that will help developing economies trade, grow, reform, and transform.

Finance for reform can come from borrowing, taxing, or the revenues from trade. If countries are already indebted, or already heavily taxed, the first two can be unhelpful. Trade-led growth is a more viable option because it enables countries to earn their way out of poverty and inequality. And it works best if market access in importing countries is free and fair. Many of Canada’s imports from the developing world are from heavily gendered industries. And Canada, ranked by GDP as the world’s tenth largest economy, still maintains significant protections against these industries.

The FIAP directs a strong emphasis on agriculture and rural interventions. There is no question that providing rural women with access to credit, securing title to land, and other reforms are essential to progress. But agriculture in the developing world is often a low productivity activity and likely to remain so until the WTO solves the problem of subsidies in agriculture.

Manufacturing, industrialization, and occasionally services, are historically the engines of economic growth in most countries. Industrialization usually begins with the growth of labour intensive and often gender intensive manufacturing like processed foods, apparel, textiles and footwear. If growth is successful, then countries diversify to higher value-added industries like electronics and machinery. In the process they can transform their economies and societies to provide the distributive benefits that the FIAP seeks. Canada’s early imports of manufactured goods from developing countries demonstrate precisely this trend. In the 1970s and ’80s, China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan exported many labour- and gender- intensive products, processed food, apparel, textiles and footwear to Canada before transitioning to higher value-added exports such as electronics, machinery and eventually services.

Today, an additional 40 developing countries export to Canada. Their highest or second-highest value-added manufactured exports are foundational, labour/gender-intensive imports, particularly apparel. But unlike the Asian Tigers, few if any of these countries – Guatemala, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, South Africa, even Bangladesh and many others – attract the unprecedented levels of investment that enabled the Tigers to graduate quickly from manufacturing to industry and services. If these countries don’t trade their way to prosperity, they can stay stuck in low-level manufacturing without acquiring the resources for economic transformation, let alone reform. And Canada’s tariffs don’t help.

Canadian policy-makers may not have noticed that some of Canada’s import tariffs actually discourage the growth of developing countries’ labour- and gender-intensive exports.  Apparel, for example, is the highest or second highest value-added manufactured export of many developing countries to Canada. But Canada’s tariffs on gender-intensive imports are trade-stopping, and wage- and growth-depressing. At 15 to 18 per cent, Canada’s tariffs on key apparel items are higher than Australia’s at 5 per cent, China’s at 6 per cent, the EU’s at 12 per cent and just slightly below protectionist India’s at 20 per cent. In contrast, key apparel imports from the U.S. enter duty-free under the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), providing the U.S. with better market access than many developing countries.

Forty-seven least-developed countries (LDCs) are exempt from these tariffs and eligible for duty-free treatment. So are Canada’s handful of FTA developing country partners. Some LDC exporters grew trade with Canada after a 2003 exemption, but they may soon lose it, and return to the 18 per cent tariff.  The remainder of the LDCs (approximately 36) don’t appear to have grown duty-free trade with Canada. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many don’t know that the exemption exists, possibly a result of a deficit of Canadian programming in this area. Even Afghanistan’s apparel imports, which are eligible for duty-free treatment, attracted high tariffs throughout decades of Canadian efforts to promote economic growth.

It is at least as important to ensure that women engaged as labour in international trade are treated fairly, as it is to ensure that women entrepreneurs are able to trade successfully. About 75 per cent of the workers in the global apparel industry are female, with a hefty component of male managers. Women lose when tariffs are high because high tariffs drive down wages and working conditions. The World Bank and the World Trade Organization recently weighed in on this issue in a 2020 study, “Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality.” The study notes that “pink tariffs” on gender-intensive industries “keep women in the developing world from broader export opportunities and better jobs” and that “discriminatory trade policies that make women-dominated industries less competitive and productive are widespread.”

Tariffs are clearly not the only challenge. Global value chains that import cheap, mass-market apparel and footwear routinely demand low prices from developing country suppliers, driving down prices, wages and working conditions. In fact, a really feminist diplomatic option might be to open an international dialogue on the conditions and prices in the apparel and other labour- and gender-intensive industries to see what might be achieved.

But first, Canada could do more at home. Simply dropping the Canadian tariffs (they are not particularly welcome among Canadian retailers and manufacturers) is a first step. The upcoming review of Canada’s General Preferential Tariff may be a place to start, or Canada could undertake a review of the Canadian tariff from a trade and gender perspective. 

Canadian development policy also needs refocusing on both growth and gender. It is not aligned with the growth trajectory of exports to Canada or the heavily gendered nature of that trajectory.  First-tier labour-intensive industries may be important for future growth, but they can and do mistreat women, an issue as old as the British industrial revolution. Governments sometimes see female workers as a disposable human resource on which future wealth can be built, and fail to intervene. Canadian support in this area could both help turn around a longstanding gender problem and support economic growth. Focusing on the unhealthy gender dynamics of the industries that export to Canada, using the arsenal of instruments the FIAP has already developed – public-private partnerships, labour rights, green growth, support for childcare – would be a start. One of Canada’s few official development assistance forays into this area was in 2013 when poorly built Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, which made clothes for Loblaws, collapsed, killing 1,132 workers, mostly women. There hasn’t been much since.

After COVID-19’s ravages on developing countries’ industries, particularly the apparel industry, Canada’s current trade, development and feminist policies could be better tuned to both economic growth and the needs and realities of women working as labour in developing countries. That reform would demonstrate to skeptical developing country governments that Canada’s feminism has tangible results as well as long-term potential.

Fauzya Moore is an Ottawa-based consultant and writer. She has worked as a Senior Economic Advisor at the various iterations of Global Affairs Canada, and also as a Senior Advisor on Governance at the Treasury Board of Canada. She is also a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School (2009) where she held both a Fulbright scholarship and a fellowship from the Ash Centre for Governance and Innovation. She has worked in both the developed and developing world.

To read the full commentary from the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, please click here.

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Part of the “Build Back Better” plan passed by Congress at the end of last week, it gets a thumbs up from many battling climate change on both sides of the border.

Offering an effective $12,500 US subsidy if American residents buy an electric vehicle rather than one with a traditional engine, the move is considered a positive step toward coaxing gas-powered vehicles — and their emissions — out of the market.

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But there are cries from Canadian economic nationalists that if the subsidy only goes to American-made cars, as planned, it could simultaneously squeeze Canada out of the business of making EVs, resulting in an unfavourable effect on well-paying Canadian jobs.

It could also fracture North America’s deeply integrated automotive supply chain, with repercussions in the U.S. as well.

“Any cars made in Canada would not get the subsidy and would be a lot more expensive. In a way, it would be like imposing a high tariff,” explained Patrick Leblond, who teaches public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa.

It means that if U.S. residents — who make up the vast majority of North American vehicle buyers — were to buy an identical or similar car made in Canada, it would cost them thousands of dollars more.

 

Existing Canadian plants making internal combustion vehicles might not be affected, but that would change as automakers plan new factories. And the Buy American policy could influence those plans now.

“Obviously, the big carmakers would build their plants in the U.S. instead of in Canada,” said Leblond.

And just like when Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and forest products, some say Canada must examine how it can make some sort of counter-threat, perhaps even offering up a list of products made in the U.S.,  but not in Canada, that would face tariffs here if the tax credit goes ahead.

“Sometimes, at least, the threat is a way to say, ‘Hey, let’s get our friends in the U.S. that depend on the Canadian economy to put pressure on Congress or the administration to make this thing go away,'” said Leblond.

‘Politically toxic’

As several of those I spoke to pointed out, offering a similar tax advantage for Canadian-made cars would not have the same effect, due to our unequal market clout. And putting tariffs on American-built EVs would simultaneously be bad for both climate change and Canadian auto-parts producers.

But one place Canada could take action would be on the production of key minerals needed to make EV batteries; Canadian mines, while currently undeveloped, could be a reliable and nearby non-Chinese source for the U.S. as demand for electrified transport ramps up. 

Dan Ciuriak, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont., compares the battery-mineral situation to the time when Trump banned the export of masks to Canada — before realizing the fine pulp to make those masks actually came from Canada. That was the reason Trump backed off, he said.

But Ciuriak and others said there are also disadvantages to that kind of response. It could be “politically toxic,” Ciuriak said, for a bilateral relationship that is currently largely amicable.

Overcoming a protectionist agenda isn’t a problem easily solved.

“It is a big deal,” said Valerie Hughes, a Canadian lawyer with years of trade experience, including a decade at the World Trade Organization (WTO). While it depends on the final wording of the legislation, she said the EV tax credit is probably illegal under WTO rules and the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

Hughes said she opposes the harsh trade retaliation that was seen in the Trump era.

“We did it once … because that was really the world we were living in,” said Hughes. “There was unilateral action that was contrary to the rules. The U.S. was doing it — and we just didn’t see a way out of it.”

But this time, said Hughes, there are much friendlier options, including vested Canadian parties reaching out to their U.S. counterparts at all levels — whether in government, industry or labour — to remind them that deeply integrated North American automobile production creates jobs and wealth on both sides of the border.

 

If necessary, Canada can always use the dispute-settling mechanisms of CUSMA, she said, calling them quite effective compared to the previous NAFTA dispute-settling process.

Mark Warner, a well-known Canadian trade lawyer, is skeptical of Ottawa’s proposition that Canada is being cheated by the plan. While that mentality may get people riled up, he said, the best way to work with the U.S. is calm negotiation.

Warner points out that the EV legislation is all about U.S. politics — an attempt to show that green investment will help create good American jobs. There is still time to negotiate, since the bill has yet to pass through the Senate. It will be five years before the Buy American portions of the law go into effect.

Climate change knows no borders

On the other hand, even a law coming in five years can affect business planning now. And once in effect, it will be harder to change.

In addition to convincing labour and business interests in the U.S. that continuing to work with Canada is in their own best interest, there is another potential set of allies, said Dale Beugin, with the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.

U.S. climate scientists and activists, he said, know that greenhouse gases do not respect national boundaries.

“Climate change requires co-operation across countries, across borders — and you want to be enabling a low-carbon transition, not just in the U.S., but elsewhere as well,” said Beugin.

Squabbles over trade will just slow down the process.

Don Pittis was a forest firefighter, and a ranger in Canada’s High Arctic islands. After moving into journalism, he was principal business reporter for Radio Television Hong Kong before the handover to China. He has produced and reported for the CBC in Saskatchewan and Toronto and the BBC in London. He is currently senior producer at CBC’s business unit.

To read the full commentary from CBC, please click here.

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Canada sued at the World Trade Organization (WTO), filing a case that promised big returns for U.S. biotechnology. But that’s no longer in the cards, not because Canada can’t win, but because the Biden administration refuses to unblock the WTO’s Appellate Body (AB).

Canola oil is a genetically modified cooking oil that is popular the world over. It’s among the lowest in saturated fats and is a major Canadian export to China. Or at least it was, until an executive from Huawei was detained by Canadian authorities on a U.S. warrant for selling crucial equipment to Iran. China retaliated by banning canola imports from two Canadian firms, Viterra and Richardson International, and hit other canola imports with “enhanced” inspections. China also arrested two Canadians on allegations of spying.

Canola sales to China plummeted, prompting Canada to file a case at the WTO. And it’s a good one. The most interesting part of the case concerns health and safety standards. Canada is arguing that China has no scientific basis to do what it’s doing. The request for consultations is a whopping seven pages, hits China on a long and thorough list of legal claims and adds, for good measure, that China isn’t just violating the letter of the law, but its spirit too.

Canada can win this case. The ruling, net of all appeals, was shaping up to be a gift to U.S. biotechnology. Indeed, the dispute centers on key parts of China’s import regime on genetically modified foods, meaning the case matters beyond canola.

But since the Biden administration is refusing to unblock the AB, U.S. biotechnology will be short-changed. Why? Because Canada and China have decided to use arbitration as a work-around for an appeal, known as the multi-party interim arbitration agreement. They have no choice; the AB isn’t working. But this means that it will not be possible for bodog poker review U.S. biotechnology to get the full benefits of what was shaping up to be a “free ride.”

China’s import regime on genetically modified foods poses numerous challenges to U.S. biotechnology. Getting an import permit is time-consuming, mired in opacity and depends on things that make no scientific sense. China is a global outlier in terms of testing procedures, its toxicity restrictions, and its insistence on rat testing. Exporters need to field test in China, even though they’re not allowed to grow in China. 

Canada’s case raises two big issues that U.S. biotechnology cares about. First, that China pursues different health and safety goals depending on the food, including whether it is home-grown versus imported. Second, that there are less trade-restrictive means by which China can get the job done. Just getting China to explain its “appropriate level of protection” would have been a serious win for U.S. biotechnology.

But that’s not going to happen now. Canada and China will pursue arbitration in the AB’s absence. The two countries may reach a solution to their dispute, but there won’t be a ruling to give China political cover to comply or for the U.S. to leverage in future litigation. That’s a shame because U.S. biotechnology stood to benefit even more from a ruling than Canada, given that the U.S. is a far bigger exporter of genetically modified foods, and other countries might mimic China in closing their markets.

There’s a cost to putting trade policy on pause in a global economy. This is an example of how costly it is. If the Biden administration doesn’t soon unblock the AB, canola won’t be the last gift from an ally that the U.S. misses out on.

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In particular, various outlets reported that Commerce has published preliminary findings in the second AD/CVD administrative review, more than doubling the combined duty rate on Canadian lumber imported into the United States (from 8.99% for 2018 to 18.32% for 2019). This result shows three key concerns that I raised in my previous post:

• First, the U.S. AD/CVD system is highly uncertain, with duty rates potentially changing significantly from period to period pursuant to annual “administrative reviews.” This uncertainty acts as a significant non‐​tariff barrier on imports of goods subject to AD/CVD orders, beyond whatever the rate is at the time of importation. And, in the case of lumber, it has been exacerbated by the on‐​again, off‐​again nature of the decades‐​long dispute.
• Second, because the United States applies a “retrospective” system for collecting duties on imports subject to AD/CVD orders, the new duty rate announced last week for lumber (assuming it’s confirmed in final results expected in November) would not apply to imports currently being imported but instead to lumber already imported back in 2019. Where final duty rates for those products end up higher than the estimated rates applied at the time of importation, U.S. importers (who have no control over the process) would be on the hook for the difference. Where the change is significant (as it often is), it can result in millions of dollars in new and unexpected duty liability. Importers will also be forced to increase their cash deposits on imports now coming in (in line with the higher rate), but they won’t know for years — when Commerce finishes its 2021 review — if they owe U.S. Customs more or less in final duties. All of this creates even more financial uncertainty for importers, further discouraging them (especially smaller ones) from importing lumber from Canada.
• Finally, that Commerce doubled duty rates while lumber prices are sky high (and perhaps threatening the U.S. economic recovery) again shows how insulated the AD/CVD process is from economic reality. In this case, the law has no quick fix for “emergency” economic situations and expressly prohibits U.S. administering agencies (including Commerce) from considering duties’ harms to consumers or the broader “public interest.”

Thus, America’s “lumber duty problem” is really a systemic problem — one that requires a systemic (legislative) solution.

Scott Lincicome is a senior fellow in economic studies. He writes on international and domestic economic issues, including international trade; subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; and economic dynamism.

To read the original blog post on the CATO Institute, please click here.

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With electric vehicle production surging globally and many nations working to meet ambitious climate targets, the demand for lithium-ion batteries is expected to grow exponentially for years. As a result, according to a new report from Clean Energy Canada (CEC), developing Canada’s battery supply chain presents a huge opportunity for the nation’s economy, but one that will disappear if action is not taken promptly.

The benefits of Canada developing a robust battery supply chain are clear-cut and gaining increased attention. Electric Autonomy Canada recently announced a national panel discussion series, starting June 1, which will explore why and how stakeholders at various levels can act to turn the huge industrial potential into reality.

Minerals, materials in place

As the report, Turning Talk into Action: Building Canada’s Battery Supply Chainpoints out, the global market for lithium-ion batteries is expected to exceed $100 billion by 2030, causing an explosion in demand for minerals such as graphite, lithium and cobalt. Currently, 80 per cent of the world’s batteries are produced in Japan, South Korea and China, and battery production in the EU has begun ramping up significantly.

With known deposits of those critical minerals, ample clean energy, and access to a highly skilled workforce and a well-integrated North American market, Canada has concrete potential to be a sustainable battery provider.

In fact, BloombergNEF recently ranked this country fourth in the world in terms of that supply chain potential.

However, according to the CEC report, should battery manufacturing not materialize quickly enough domestically, the Asian and European battery sectors will likely pick up the slack, while the EU aims to be entirely self-sufficient in EV batteries by 2025.

Government, industry organization key

The federal government has acknowledged the sector’s potential; its strengthened climate plan committed to a “mines to mobility” battery development strategy, and the 2021 budget included $36.8 million to advance critical battery mineral processing and refining expertise. It has also invested$100 million in Lion Electric’s battery module production facility in Quebec and entered into a Joint Action plan on Critical Minerals with the U.S. government.

But the report, compiled after a two-day workshop involving many leading Canadian players, such as General Motors Canada, Lion Electric, the Mining Association of Canada, the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association and Unifor, says it needs to do more.

Foremost among its recommendations is a call for the formation of an “intergovernmental battery secretariat” to coordinate provincial and federal government efforts to develop Canada’s battery manufacturing potential, as well as an industry-led battery task force. It also recommends the formation of a North American Battery Alliance in order to leverage our U.S.-integrated economy and form a strategy that ensures competitiveness with Europe, where an EU battery alliance already exists among key government and industrial groups for the same purpose.

Equally crucial, however, is maximizing access to Canada’s sustainable battery metals, minerals and materials supply. In order to kickstart a sustainable and robust battery manufacturing sector, the report recommends improving supply chain data and transparency, developing a mineral and metal production action plan and creating a plan for clean investment in Canadian mining projects.

Other key recommendations include launching a dedicated battery industry supply fund, promoting Canada’s brand as a supplier of clean batteries, and creating a battery centre of excellence which could conduct research and direct innovation in next-generation battery technology, advanced battery manufacturing and battery recycling.

Luke Sarabia is a writer and editor based in Toronto. He holds a degree in English and Art History from McGill University.

To read the full commentary, please click here.

To read the referenced report, please click here.

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