I'll bet I know what looks "fair" to the US under Trump.
Unlimited access with no tariffs for US goods (including guns regardless of our laws) into Canada and no access for any goods that can be produced in the US and those that do enter have 100 to 200% tariff rates because we have subsidies like universal healthcare and social services.
I used to have ethical concerns about China that I didn't have with the US. Now my ethical concerns for China are still there but I have equal ethical concerns about the US. Between trashing what limited health access was accomplished, continuing the spiral the education system down the drain and reneging on global agreements at least you know what you're getting when you deal with China.
http://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4354020
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As a Canadian-aphile in the U.S., I will say that NAFTA harmed all that was good in the Canada social/economic model. In the U.S., the treaty devastated the hopes of older industrial communities large and small. In Mexico, NAFTA killed the nation's small farm economies, causing a rebellion brutally put down by massive military repression that further devastated rural life. A very bad deal for about 90 percent of North Americans. This is not a latter day view. I was in the street protesting NAFTA and GATT in the '90s. Looking back at all the warnings back then about the free trade treaties, it is clear NAFTA and GATT have turned out worse than feared.
ReplyDelete^ I wrote that about the issue of free trade treaties in general. It's not meant to follow on your specific comments, Cass Morrison. I largely agree with what you said.
ReplyDeleteQuébec has been dumping lumber. Canada has been playing little games with which Americans they allow to drive in, games the Americans don't play. Canada dumps dairy. It's not just the health care Canada subsidises okay?
ReplyDeleteI've been to Canada twice. What games were these that I missed?
ReplyDeleteBrian Arbenz
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lundinlawpllc.com/practice-areas/washington-state-dui/entering-canada-with-a-dui/
I don't begrudge Canada any of its rights as a sovereign nation. I believe NAFTA was nothing but a gigantic rigging of the economic game on the continent of North America. It gouged the living heart out of America's little towns and cities.
ReplyDeleteTrue story. I was on a consulting gig, moving an auto wiring harness factory from the US to Mexico. The entire robotics engineering team was sitting across the table from the manufacturer's people. "Oh" said one of our engineers, who was not a salesman, "we can't possibly do business at less than a million dollars billable." The manufacturer's people didn't blink. "Okay..." they said.
After the meeting, we kinda held our collective breath and went out for dinner. At that point, we all whooped and hollered, "Eric! You da man! Can't do business for less than a million. Balls of steel!"
Yeah. Displaced about 600 workers immediately. I spoke Spanish, so I got to deal with the Mexican crews who would man those robots.
As for Bombardier, they played an even more interesting game. See, they took their factory to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where they got subsidies from the UK, which isn't part of NAFTA. Canada and Québec were part of it, too, but the UK's participation is what really aggravated everyone.
ReplyDeleteThe USA wasn't the first to complain. Brazil's Embraer, which competes in the same market segment, had been going after Bombardier in WTO, but getting nowhere. Then comes the Delta deal, which was so obviously dumping nobody can possibly say otherwise.
See, with commercial aircraft, you only get to sell one airframe. But you can sell parts and upgrades for that same airframe twenty times. Bombardier saw how Europe's Airbus had basically murdered Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas with their government-subsidised commercial aircraft and figured they could do the same to the upstart Embraer. What they hadn't figured on was Boeing picking up the shillelagh in Washington DC.
Now Canada's all mad 'n carrying on about the Evil USA. We're now down to one commercial aircraft manufacturer, thanks to Airbus. Canada wants to spike the market with subsidised airframes so they can bust some Brazilian outfit - by building a factory in Belfast, with not only provincial and national subsidies, but foreign subsidies as well ? And dump at half the COGS ?
The only problem with NAFTA was that corporate merger mania unleashed by the Reagan administration gave a few mega-corporations way too much power. A free trade treaty with a smaller and medium-sized business based economy could have been beneficial. Also, automation. More jobs were lost in the American industrial belt to automation than to NAFTA. The GE plant in Louisville, the nation's largest factory in the 1960s, plummeted to 1/4 as many jobs by the late 1980s and with far fewer benefits. It wasn't NAFTA. It was conversion to robots. It also was the vastly higher corporate profit margins, which resulted from merger mania and corporate tax cuts. Also, Kentucky and most industrial states' lack of economic conversion strategies killed communities. Nobody, except Minnesota, put more into education, and Minnesota has the best economy in the Midwest by far, and is No. 1 in the nation in economic confidence. .
ReplyDeleteBrian Arbenz Heh. I was at GE Appliances Louisville, 1999 - 2000. It wasn't the robots that doomed GE Louisville. It was Mabe.
ReplyDeleteMabe who?
ReplyDeleteBrian Arbenz
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Mabe (company) - Wikipedia
Brian Arbenz Everyone likes to blame the robots for lost jobs. It's a myth. I've been doing automation and integration for more than thirty years, the robots never replace people except in two places: the welding torch and the paint booth. See, here's the sovereign rule: robots are good at following rules and lousy at handling exceptions. Human beings are the exact opposite.
ReplyDeleteSo put a person with the robot, someone who understands the task, to handle the exceptions which arise. Even if that meat sack only does ten minutes of work a day, he's justified a full salary, simply because he can deal with the exceptions.
The root problem is really in corporate governance. If workers are put on boards of directors, as is the case in Germany (and has been since 1919 in various forms) , the old worker-versus-management conflict is immediately eliminated. They're both on the same side of the table, with customers and suppliers and vendors and government on the other side of the table, as it should be.
Canada and USA have always gotten along reasonably well and always will. But differences will arise, grievances must be addressed, it's a continuing relationship which will require continuing maintenance. NAFTA has caused a lot of grief here in the USA. I know, I participated in a lot of that grief, it was great for my career. But I'm under no illusions about the devastation it wreaked, especially in New England and across the American Midwest.
Robots never replace people except at two positions? Have you been paying attention?
ReplyDeleteRobots make different skills required. The things the US doesn't like is our "subsidies" in form of social net.
ReplyDeleteBrian Arbenz (grimly) 30 plus years. Factory automation. Not one job. Hundreds of robots.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison In terms of a social safety net, Canada is way ahead of the USA. In terms of NAFTA we must disagree.
ReplyDelete