Carleton University professor Ian Lee
CANADA’S POSITION ON TARIFFS AND TRADE: Silly, delusional and mathematically stupid
Tom More
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — Ottawa’s Carleton University associate professor of business management and public policy Ian Lee has come out swinging against Canada’s trade war tactics against the United States.
People don’t seem to realize that when Canada puts tariffs on U.S. products and brags that the government will collect millions in tariff taxes, Canadians are the ones paying those taxes, Lee said, in multiple interviews on CBC.
Canada is insignificant to the United States and to think we can fight a trade war without damaging our own economy is delusional, he said. “You have a big economy and a small economy and they get into a fight. The evidence is just overwhelming. A small country does not have the resources or the resilience to win in a trade war with a large economy. It’s not only that they lack the resources but the large economy, contrary to all the nonsense that’s going around Canada — that we can bring the U.S. to its knees — is just silly when you look at the data.
“We export $400-billion a year to the United States. And people say that’s a huge amount of money. It’s 1.5 per cent of U.S. GDP,” he said. As an analogy, he said that if you were walking down the street it would be like finding a loonie on the sidewalk.
The United States is the largest economy on planet earth with a GDP of $32-trillion (GDP or gross domestic product is the annual value of all goods and services produced by a country). Access to the U.S. is like reaching the Stanley Cup of trade, Lee says. The United States “dwarfs all the countries in the world, including China which is a distant number two at $20 trillion.”
He notes that Canada has a GDP of just over $2 trillion and we think we are going to bring the U.S. to its knees with such little trade. “It’s beyond delusional. It shows that those people don’t have an understanding of arithmetic. We’re so small. So retaliatory measures by Canada are very dangerous because they are going to hurt us, not them.”
If Canada does not get back to the negotiating table the economy will get very ugly for Canadians, he argues, adding that Canada needs to be more flexible on supply management.
Canada’s imposed tariffs could cause massive small business failure across Canada and investment flight to the United States, as well as high unemployment, Lee argued. “Are we going to sabotage a potential trade agreement that’s going to benefit 40-million Canadians to save 9,000 dairy farmers, mostly located in Eastern Ontario and Quebec?”
Lee added that U.S. President Donald Trump did not create the weaknesses over the last 60 years in the Canadian economy. “Trump did not determine that we were going to become completely dependent on the United States for exports. That was our decision by restricting resource diversification. We have to get rid of the inter-provincial trade barriers.”
