Canadians have friends in Plattsburgh
In a challenging time, we stand with our neighbours, Garry Douglas says.
Plattsburgh, “Montreal’s U.S. suburb,” is unique in North America. For Montreal, we have evolved from beach to beachhead, promoting Quebec’s success in the U.S. market. Counter-intuitively, our Chamber of Commerce spends much of its time not promoting exports to Canada, but instead assisting Quebec businesses in building their exports to the U.S., and supporting Canadian companies in securing U.S. customers and contracts.
In Washington, D.C., and in our state capital, Albany, we focus our efforts on matters of importance to Canada, Quebec and cross-border economic partnership. Last year, we worked with our Quebec partners to largely prevent sweeping new Buy American requirements proposed for New York state. In May we led a delegation to Washington for meetings with senators and members of Congress that included the Quebec and Canadian governments and our friends at the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec (FCCQ).
In the last year, we have brought three congressional delegations to Montreal and Ottawa. Our congresswoman, Elise Stefanik, is arguably Canada’s strongest friend in Congress. Currently, we are actively telling the story to bi-national media of how the U.S. tariffs against Canada are both inappropriate and self harming. And we continue to strongly confront comments that are disparaging, insulting and misguided. In Congress, we are joined in supporting a move to end the president’s authority to impose tariffs on “national security” grounds, as this power has been so misused in the case of Canada.
Plattsburgh and Quebec share more than 200 years of social and cultural connection, unlike any other region on the border. And we and our representatives are forthrightly reminding those who need reminding that our century of alliance has seen us together in Flanders and Normandy and in Korea and Afghanistan. That Canada and the United States have been joined in NORAD since 1957, and may we never forget the Canadian families who extended heartwarming hospitality to Americans in the days after 9/11. Or Canada’s incredible assistance in facilitating the exit of several of our diplomats from Iran in 1979 during the hostage crisis.
“National security” is an absurd pretext for U.S. tariffs, but it is also absurd to not strongly differentiate the U.S.-Canadian economic relationship from all others. I believe that the U.S. and Canada no longer trade in the classic sense, especially in manufactured goods and materials, making valuations of boxes going in each direction misleading. Canada trades with Brazil. The United States trades with India. The U.S. and Canada make things together and, in so doing through increasingly integrated supply chains that in many cases go back and forth more than once from start to finish, we are both enhancing our competitiveness with China and the rest of the world.
Our two nations have in fact moved to a post-trade status, which is arguably the gold standard of bi-national economic partnerships globally. To be sure, there are and will always be areas of disagreement in such a huge and complex equation. But the story is one of incredible success for both peoples and the negotiating table is not only the right place to work out differences, but to also focus on positive opportunities to expand and improve the partnership in sectors such as targeted workforce mobility for bi-national companies, IT and a range of newer technologies.
We stand in this challenging time with our Canadian neighbours as friends, partners and family. Together, we must tell the story of maximum prosperity and progress through partnership and come through this having refused to allow anyone to harm our special connections. Officials of the last three Quebec governments have called our chamber and community “Quebec’s best friends in the U.S.” We take this compliment seriously as a responsibility to our special friends.
Garry Douglas is president and CEO of the North Country Chamber of Commerce in Plattsburgh, N.Y.