Don’ t sweat NAFTA, professor tells SACPA
Canadians won’t likely suffer if there’s not much progress on a new North American Free Trade Agreement. But some kind of a pact may yet be signed, a Lethbridge audience heard Thursday.
And it might differ very little from the existing deal, predicts political science professor Chris Kukucha.
“If we do get an agreement, it will be very loose in principle,” said Kukucha, a writer on trade issues and a faculty member at the University of Lethbridge.
“Trump needs a political win,” he reminded participants at the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs.
It might be heralded as a new, “comprehensive” agreement but it would really be “the same old stuff.”
Canada isn’t going to yield on issues like agricultural supply management, he pointed out, and American negotiators aren’t likely to drop their demands, either.
As for President Trump attempting to “rip it up,” Kukucha said that’s not within his power. That would be up to Congress — and his action would be subject to a Supreme Court challenge.
And from a political point of view, too many American interests would suffer.
A past president of the International Studies Association of Canada, Kukucha traced the history of trade pacts negotiated since the Second World War. While the first round of agreements focused on reducing import tariffs, he said, later talks began to cover sets of rules covering such irritants as “dumping” products to cripple the competition.
The “Uruguay Round” launched in the 1980s, leading to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was considered transformative, he noted. It covered services like news media and tourism, as well as “goods.”
The World Trade Organization was created in its wake, with 160 nations now signed on.
Those negotiations can be lengthy, Kukucha pointed out. Presidential candidate Ronald Regan proposed a U.S. Canada deal in 1979, but it wasn’t concluded until 1988 — when it became a key issue in the Canadian election campaign.
More recently, he added, the new pact between Canada and Korea took eight years to complete. And American leaders expect a new NAFTA deal in just six months?
So far, “We haven’t covered very much at all,” with just six of 33 sections of the current agreement discussed.
But if talks failed and the president actually cancelled the deal, Kukucha told a questioner it could still be business as usual. Trade between Canada and the U.S. would be covered by WTO rules. “They aren’t all that much different.” As well, he added, “We’re dealing with a particularly unique president who seems to like our prime minister.”