David Alward Says Trade Relationship With U.S. Healthy Despite the ‘Noise’
At the Port Days breakfast in Saint John this morning, former premier David Alward, and now Canada’s Consul General to New England, told the story of a Canadian diplomat in Washington who had a large collection of U.S. political cartoons about Canadian trade issues on his office walls.
This was nearly 25 years ago, at the time NAFTA was being passed and implemented continent-wide after heated debates in Canada and the U.S. The cartoons, Alward said, were about trade disputes in the lumber, agricultural and fisheries industries and portrayed Canada and Canadians in a “less than flattering light.”
“Does this sound familiar to you? Has much changed since then?” Alward asked the crowd gathered at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre.
The kicker to his story: The cartoons were from the 1880s and 90s, not the 1990s and 90s. His point, of course, was that New Brunswick business and political leaders shouldn’t worry that the recent acrimony over trade issues like softwood lumber and NAFTA will become a permanent part of the U.S.-Canada trade relationship.
“Canada has managed and resolved these issues in the past. It won’t be easy but we will do it again,” said Alward early in a 30-minute speech in which he never once mentioned the U.S. president by name.
He accentuated the positive throughout, saying that reopening NAFTA was a good thing because it needed to be “updated and modernized” nearly 25 after it was first adopted.
“This is a normal, good practice for any trade agreement,” he said. “This should include the thinning, not thickening of the border for the movement of people and goods.”
Alward also said the trade relationship is significant and mutually beneficial, regardless of the “noise” about trade issues south of the border.
In 2016, Alward said bilateral trade between the two countries totalled $635-billion, with Canada the largest export market for the U.S. “We are by far their best customer,” he said.
It’s fair trade, he said, trade that’s truly bilateral. In 2016, he said the U.S. actually posted a small trade surplus of $8.1-billion with Canada. “So far in 2017 it looks like Canada might post a surplus,” he said.
“This back and forth of surpluses in the largest trade relationship in the world is the sign of a fair, healthy relationship.”
So Alward believes the U.S. will ultimately realize they have an equitable relationship with Canada, and the noise will dissipate.
“You don’t manage a relationship this large and complex on the latest breaking news,” he said.
Or by the tenor of the editorial cartoons of the day, for that matter.
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