Ireland’s trade minister to Canada: You need to make ‘new friends’
When it comes to size and geography, Ireland and Canada may not seem to have all that much in common.
Yet both countries know what it means to be disproportionately dependent on a single trading partner — one that has become decidedly unpredictable in the last number of years.
As such, both have made trade diversification a key economic policy, though the Irish have been chasing this goal far longer, and arguably with more success, than Canada.
That in mind, Irish Minister of State for Trade Pat Breen had a few words of advice for Canada while in Toronto this week.
“Canada has had its struggles with the U.S. obviously in relation to the NAFTA agreement,” Breen said. “And the fact that 75 per cent of your exports go into the U.S. means that you should not be putting all your eggs in that one basket. For any country that’s doing well, and Canada is doing well, you need to be making new friends all the time.”
It’s an approach Ireland has been pursuing since the 1950s, following a failed attempt to supply all of its own needs through protected domestic industries. Back then, most trade took place across the Irish Sea, leaving Ireland overwhelmingly dependent on the United Kingdom. So the tiny island nation of nearly five million people abruptly changed course and opened itself up, opting to focus on foreign direct investment, building export industries and mapping new trade routes.
“Certainly the government policy was always to diversify trade away from the U.K. ...,” said Frank Barry, professor of international business and economic development at Trinity College Dublin. “But it wasn’t easy to do.”
Indeed, the project didn’t really take off until 1973 when Ireland joined the European Community, now the European Union. With new access to the vast European market, exports to Britain fell from 55 per cent at the point of membership to 14 per cent today.