Tag: Wesley Wark

The prime minister’s challenge is how to manage both the most important Canadian ally and his own domestic politics. “The charm offensive has produced little of what the prime minister hoped.” Even before Mr. Trump came to power, Mr. Trudeau, and his closest aides and cabinet members rushed to connect with the new president and his advisers. Now Mr. Trump is challenging Canada’s longtime dairy system, which uses high tariffs to largely exclude imports. The prospect of a full-on trade war is an alarming proposition; trade with the United States is the economic lifeblood of Canada. “We cannot win a trade war with 75 percent of our trade going to the U.S. We’re highly vulnerable to American actions. He has to deal with the survival of the Canadian economy.” In recent days, Mr. Trump has focused mainly on Canada’s dairy system, known as “supply management,” which is a longstanding irritant between Canada and several other countries, including the United States. Still, the United States sells about five times more dairy products to Canada than Canada exports south. Nonetheless, the supply management system riles up Mr. Trump, who says the Canadian market should be fully opened to American dairy farmers. “The U.S. position on supply management hasn’t changed since President Obama,” said Meredith Lilly, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and the former international trade adviser to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Politicians of all political stripes have avoided pushing back, and Canada has won exemptions for the system in several trade agreements, including Nafta and, most recently, a free-trade pact with Europe.