U.S. duties show need to keep NAFTA clause

The American government’s ruling against Bombardier last week was as harsh as it was unfair.

The penalty it imposed on the Canadian company — duties of 219 per cent on imports of Bombardier’s C Series planes into the U.S. — is so absurd it would be laughable if the threat it poses to our economy weren't so real.

But beyond the havoc the U.S. Department of Commerce's decision could wreak on Canada’s aerospace industry and the thousands of people it employs, this ruling should have one positive consequence.

It should drive home to Canadians why the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement needs to keep the old deal’s Chapter 19.

That section provides an independent, neutral and binding process for resolving trade disputes between NAFTA's members: Canada, the United States and Mexico.

It could help Bombardier now. It would protect Canada's interests in future.

Clearly, Canadians have every reason to believe that in Donald Trump’s protectionist America, the U.S. Department of Commerce was acting like a body guard for one of the country’s aerospace giants, Chicago-based Boeing Company.

Independent? Neutral? Balanced? Not on your life. From the north of the CanadaU.S. border, this smells like the American government protecting an American corporation by trying to ground the sales of a Canadian company.

Even Boeing wasn’t trying to hit Bombardier as hard as the Department of Commerce did.

Boeing asked for an 80-per-cent countervailing duty. The commerce department went nearly three times higher.

To be sure, participants in international trade disputes enter a murky, legal labyrinth.

Determining who's good or bad matters less than parsing out what a complex law actually means.

In this case, Boeing claims subsidies from the Canadian federal, Quebec and British governments allowed Bombardier to sell 75 of its C Series planes to U.S.-based Delta Air Lines at “absurdly low prices.”

But if it’s a sin to accept government support, it’s one in which Boeing has freely indulged.

A March 18, 2015, story in the Washington Post reported Boeing “has received more state and local subsidy dollars than any other corporation in American, according to newly released data compiled by Good Jobs First, a policy resource center on subsidy data.”

Bombardier is convinced Boeing is using “a skewed process to stifle competition.”

As long as this battle is to be resolved in the U.S. by the U.S. government and according to U.S. whims, Canadians have reason to believe Bombardier’s charge is valid.

The one ray of light in a dispute clouded by U.S. protectionism comes in NAFTA's Chapter 19.

It allows Canada to challenge this U.S. government decision before an independent, binding panel.

There are fears U.S. President Trump wants to tear this chapter out of any new deal, likely because Canada has used it successfully in the past.

This is one fight he can’t be allowed to win.

Canadian government negotiators who are currently in NAFTA talks have said there will be no new deal without Chapter 19.

They should plant the Maple Leaf flag in this ground and not budge a centimetre.