Trade

Tuesday February 2, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 2, 2021

No written guarantee on EU vaccine shipments, says international trade minister

January 28, 2021

Minister of International Trade Mary Ng said she has received assurances that export controls on vaccines introduced by the European Union will not affect Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine orders. 

Testifying at the House of Commons trade committee Monday, Ng said the government received verbal assurances in phone conversations with EU officials that Canada’s shipments will not be disrupted.

Opposition MPs asked Ng why the government had not secured a more formal, written guarantee from the EU.

Ng said she spoke with EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed the issue with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“I reiterated that Canada has advanced purchase agreements with vaccine manufacturers in Europe, and we expect that those agreements be respected,” Ng said.

January 7, 2021

“Vice-President Dombrovskis provided strong reassurances that this mechanism will not delay vaccine shipments to Canada, and we both committed to continue to work together, as we have since the beginning of the pandemic.”

On Jan. 29, the European Commission introduced new export controls for the 27-member bloc, which requires member states to get authorization before they can export vaccine doses out of the EU.

The export controls have raised concerns that Canada’s advance purchase agreements may not be honoured, which would threaten the supply of vaccines coming into the country. Canada is not on a list of countries exempted from the controls.

While Ng said Canada would prefer to get on that list, she did not elaborate on a pathway to do so. She repeatedly brought up that other countries such as the United States and Australia are also not exempt.

Ng said she spoke with the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium Sunday, Sophie Wilmès, who gave similar assurances that Canada’s advanced purchase agreements would be honoured.  The Pfizer vaccines Canada has ordered are being manufactured at a facility in Puurs, Belgium.

Conservative MP Ziad Aboultaif said the government should have pushed for a written guarantee. 

“There’s a term here — if it’s not in writing, [it] never happened. Do you agree?” Aboultaif asked.

Ng responded that she was confident in the assurances she had received.

“What I would say is that assurances by a vice-president and commissioner of the European Union, as well as the European Union president, to a prime minister, is a … good thing,” Ng said. (CBC) 

 

Thursday September 17, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 17, 2020

U.S. calls off tariffs on Canadian aluminum — for now

The United States hit the pause button on tariffs on Canadian aluminum today, agreeing to withdraw current penalties — at least until after the presidential election in November.

November 21, 2019

The move came right as Canada was set to impose a wide range of retaliatory measures that would have hit some politically inconvenient targets for President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election.

Ottawa was planning to reveal its targets for retaliation at 3 p.m. ET today. Shortly after noon, however, the U.S. abruptly declared it would drop its recently imposed 10 per cent import tax on Canadian aluminum — and revisit the issue every month.

That doesn’t mean the conflict is over. In making the announcement, the U.S. unilaterally set monthly targets for the volume of aluminum imports it will accept from Canada without a tariff.

Those targets set by the U.S. take effect in September. The U.S. said it will monitor export volumes six weeks after the end of every month — which punts the issue to mid-November, right after the Nov. 3 presidential election.

May 24, 2019

A Washington trade expert who worked in the Obama White House said it appears the Trump administration wanted to postpone a politically risky fight.

According to Canadian officials, the list of retaliatory tariffs Canada was preparing to impose Tuesday would have struck the very Ohio washing-machine plant where Trump announced his levy on cross-border aluminum.

“I think the threat the Canadian government made of retaliation was credible,” said Chad Bown, a trade official in the Obama White House and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“[It had] the potential to hurt some of President Trump’s voters.”

The federal government welcomed the U.S. decision — but warned it’s still prepared to impose retaliatory measures if necessary. (CBC) 

 

Thursday January 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 16, 2020

‘Canada should be worried’: Canadian exporters may become collateral damage of U.S-China trade deal

June 28, 2019

The signing of a “Phase One” U.S.-China trade deal this week is expected to create a brief respite from uncertainty for the global economy — but that’s unlikely to last as long as President Donald Trump is in the White House, analysts say.

What’s more, Canadian exporters could become collateral damage of a deal that will see China commit to purchasing vast amounts of U.S. agricultural products and other goods.

Top officials are slated to sign the pact in Washington on Wednesday following two years of trade strife in which the U.S. slapped tariffs on nearly two-thirds of Chinese imports and Beijing targeted more than half of all goods purchased from the U.S.

May 11, 2019

Though the official text of the deal has yet to be released, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said China will purchase an additional US$200 billion in American goods over the next two years, including US$40 to US$50 billion in agricultural products.

The upending of trade flows as a result of such a commitment could create painful headaches for Canadian agricultural producers.

“The reason Canada should be worried about this is what is China actually agreeing to do?” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “Are they agreeing to open their market for everybody? Or are they agreeing to reorient their purchases away from everybody else and toward American purchases? That matters.”

Animated!

Indeed, Canadian canola producers are already experiencing the chill of lost sales to the powerful Chinese market — which once accepted 40 per cent of their exports — after Beijing blocked all purchases of the oilseed. Though officials cited pest concerns, the move was widely viewed as retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition request. Meantime, Canadian soybean producers, having experienced a brief but dramatic spike in sales after China placed tariffs on U.S. beans, also saw sales to the superpower bottom out after the Wanzhou arrest.

Though Lighthizer has said the pact will be compliant with World Trade Organization rules, the Chinese purchasing commitments have also raised concerns about discrimination against some markets in favour of the U.S. The WTO’s “most favoured nation” rule requires all trading partners to be treated equally unless a full free trade agreement is forged. The U.S.-China deal covers only a limited range of goods. (Financial Post) 

 

Thursday December 12, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday December 12, 2019

Two Canadians held for a year by China remain ‘resilient’

Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, were both detained on 10 December 2018.

August 23, 2019

China has accused the pair of espionage.

The move by Beijing is widely viewed as “hostage diplomacy” – a tactic to put the pressure on Canada to release Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Beijing denies the men’s cases are related to Ms Meng’s arrest in Canada last year, but supporters say the two are being used as pawns in a larger political dispute.

December 12, 2018

The Canadian government says neither man has had access to a lawyer and have been denied contact with their families and loved ones.

“Our heart goes out to the two Canadians detained in China unjustly,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday.

“It’s difficult to even describe this cloud, or the weight that hangs over an organisation when your colleague, your friend has been in a Chinese prison for a year,” Brittany Brown, with the International Crisis Group, Mr Kovrig’s employer, told the BBC.

March 1, 2019

“Not a day goes by that someone in Crisis Group is doing something, engaging with someone, talking with someone, pushing certain points behind the scenes to try and support the Canadian [government] efforts,” she said.

Current and past presidents from the NGO published an open letter last week calling his detention “unjust and inhumane”.

Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, said that during a recent consular visit, Mr Kovrig asked officials: “When are you going to get me out of this mess?”

“You need to have some hope,” says Mr Saint-Jacques, who once worked with the ex-diplomat. (BBC) 

 

Wednesday December 11, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday December 11, 2019

NAFTA, Impeachment: A Donald Trump doubleheader

“I want you to do us a favour,” said Donald Trump, and Nancy Pelosi complied on Tuesday, finally releasing the parking brake from a revised North American Free Trade Agreement and giving the president a glut of gloat-able, quotable material to use on the re-election trail about what an Artful Dealer he is.

July 27, 2018

Announcement of the replacement for what Trump often has called “the worst trade deal in the history of the world” came on the same morning of the same day that the same Madame Speaker – using the word “solemn” twice in her first sentence – announced the two specific, alleged “high crimes” for which the president will be tried and quickly acquitted by his cowed Republican allies in the U.S. Senate next month.

During any other presidency, such a contradiction would be considered dizzily discombobulating, but this is Trump. Adding to the vertigo, the president capped this bestest awfulest day by gaggling in the Oval Office with Sergei Victorovich Lavrov, the amiable foreign minister of Russia, which got America into this mess in the first place.

November 19, 2019

Known to the White House as the “US-Mexico-Canada Agreement” and the most significant legislative achievement of Trump’s presidency since his trillion-dollar tax cuts of Christmas, 2017, the tri-national treaty will impact the continent’s factories and farms long after Trump has passed from the scene, be it by a hostile Senate vote or defeat at the totally-rigged ballot boxes. Most of its last-second amendments relate to the enforcement of labour standards in Mexican factories.

“It could be perishable,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday morning, explaining why she chose to move USMCA at the same hour that she has been labelling the president “a clear and present danger” to the survival of the republic.

November 16, 2019

That it was the “deranged Democrats” who actually forged the final rewrite of the new-NAFTA, colluding with union groups to get the Mexican government to agree to a quid pro quo of freer trade in exchange for higher wages and tighter environmental and enforcement causes, is unlikely to be a feature of Trump’s stump speech between now and November. The only clause that he is likely to invoke is himself as Santa, once again squeezing his bulk down the national chimney with jobs, jobs, jobs.

Meanwhile, the president blithely romped along the rim of constitutional death Tuesday, tweeting that his life-long nemesis, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler “just said that I ‘pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 Election.’ Ridiculous, and he knows that is not true. Both the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said, many times, that there ‘WAS NO PRESSURE.’ Nadler and the Dems know this, but refuse to acknowledge!” 

Trump then flew to swing-state Pennsylvania for a rally with the deplored. (MacLean’s)