Trump’s “Shakedown” Must be Resisted: Media Coverage of Centre for Future Work Report

The Centre for Future Work’s new report on trade talks between Canada and the U.S. has received extensive coverage in Canadian media, as the August 1 deadline to reach a ‘deal’ with the U.S. looms. The report, “A Bad Deal With Trump is Worse Than No Deal At All,” lists several reasons why locking in one-sided U.S. tariffs in a non-binding memorandum with the erratic U.S. President would hurt Canada much worse than other U.S. trading partners, and reduce chances of rolling back Mr. Trump’s aggressive trade war through either international dispute settlement or in U.S. courts.

Report author and Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford was interviewed on CBC News Channel by Marianne Dimain. He explained that the current ‘deals’ Trump is reaching with several countries are not trade agreements in the conventional sense (which are legally binding and subject to parliamentary ratification by participating countries). Rather, they are non-binding frameworks that describe in broad terms future commitments by the two sides. They also maintain unilateral U.S. tariffs at significant levels (from 10% in the U.K. deal, to 47% for China), rather than the traditional approach of mutual reduction of trade barriers.

He pointed out that even though the final average tariff rate under a Trump ‘deal’ might seem lower than some of those other countries, Canada’s economy will be among the handful of hardest hit countries because of the unique role of U.S.-bound exports in overall GDP. Unfortunately, the willingness of some other countries which are less exposed to U.S. trade actions (including Japan and most recently the EU) to accept these one-sided ‘deals’ only enhances pressure on other countries (including Canada and Mexico) to buckle. “

The report’s arguments are summarized in this commentary in the Toronto Star. Stanford also discussed the report with Global TV, BNN, and several radio stations.