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Currently viewing articles tagged with Free Trade.
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The Global Economic Crisis—Part 1
Canadian Dimension posed a number of questions to three well-known economists to reflect on the roots of the crisis and what lies ahead, and to advance some progressive options. This week we publish the responses from Jim Standford, author of Ecomonics for Everyone and economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada’s largest private-sector trade union.
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Canadian Elections and the Substantial Class
The 2011 federal election shares compelling parallels with an earlier time in Canadian history.
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The Final Takeover
On August 20, U.S. president George W. Bush, Mexican president Felipe Calderón and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper met in Montebello, Quebec, for a two-day conference to ratify the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP, which was initiated in Waco, Texas, in 2005 by Bush, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican president Vincente Fox, is a plan for continental integration or a North American Union along the lines of the European Union.
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CLC Policy
We agree with the Canadian Labour Congress’s controversial position paper that free trade has not been a total “economic disaster.” But we disagree that economic integration has gone so far that measures to reduce our dependency and challenge this right-wing direction cannot be contemplated. In this sense, the Canadian Labour Congress’s new industrial policy paper is a deep disappointment. Instead of insisting on new directions in economic policy, the CLC’s new paper lacks critical leadership, merely offering new concessions to free trade and the rule of the market.
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NAFTA At Ten
It’s a good time to “do the sums” on NAFTA. But don’t stop for long. Despite clear victories in Cancun and Miami for popular movements and for Venezuela and Brazil and other countries with progressive leadership, the juggernaut extending corporate and United States interests, whether through bilateral, regional or global negotiations — or under the table with economic and political leverage — goes on apace. And, in Canada, corporate leadership, the “think-tanks” and lobbyists they employ, and the politicians who carry their freight have been pumping out speeches, papers and proposals for their “big idea”: ever deeper integration.
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Beyond Nafta
For many of us, it’s hard to get excited about another review of NAFTA’s economic successes or failures. It’s not that such an economic review is irrelevant — coping with the economic implications of NAFTA obviously remains central to anyone concerned with social change. But in itself, the economic debate is unlikely to move us much ahead. There are just too many Œwhat-ifs’ involved for any numbers to convince skeptics. (Would business investment in Canada have slowed down if the corporate sector were defeated on NAFTA? Would Canadian companies have been less productive if they didn’t face the pressures of free trade? Would U.S. retaliation against Canadian exports into the U.S. been worse?)
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