HIstory of Trade Agreements
So who was surprised that a Nafta agreement was eventually reached? And since no deal was repeatedly declared to be better than a bad deal, it must by definition be a good deal. I was reminded of the observation made when the Canada-US trade agreement was first reached: that it was not so much a bad deal as a framework for an endless series of bad deals. We get a promise of prosperity by hitching our economy to the Americans'. Then, as our dependency on the American market grows, the deal becomes more essential, the difficulty of getting the US to comply with the rules grows, and the price to be paid for our market access more expensive. I wasn't expecting a failure in this negotiation, but I might not have regretted it much. For all the talk of tariffs these days, tariffs between the US and Canada were not large even when the first deals were negotiated. The issue was always what are called "non-tariff barriers." And non tariff barriers usually means: government...