The US Tariff Shock Exposes Canada’s Real Trade Failure - C.D. Howe Institute

Kimberly Clausing, University of California, Los Angeles; and Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC, USA. In recent months, the Trump Administration has engaged in another inscrutable series of trade actions against its neighbor to the north, relying on a never-before-used tariff authority from the 1930 Smoot–Hawley tariff legislation (Section 338) to levy tariffs up to 50% on a subset of Canadian trade. Canada followed with “dollar for dollar” retaliation, and since then Trump has announced more measures, including import bans on certain goods and moves to strip Canadian products from government procurement programs.

On Monday, Albertans vote on whether to stay in Canada or hold another binding referendum on quitting Canada. If the vote goes as polls suggest, a majority of Albertans will mark an X to stay in Confederation, and Premier Danielle Smith has said if that’s so, she expects everyone to accept it and move on. Leaders of the independence movement contest that. And political watchers are divided about whether separation — previously a fringe sentiment — will now be a prominent, permanent feature of Alberta’s political landscape, as in Quebec. Julian Castro-Rea, a political-science professor at the University of Alberta who studies the separation debates in Quebec and Alberta, believes as long as Alberta feels alienated from the Canadian capital — feeling that Ottawa benefits from Alberta’s resource economy without giving back — the movement will have fuel. “Even if the referendum is lost, the westernization will still be around, because it’s kind of a way which, traditionally, Albertans have related to the rest of Canada,” says Castro-Rea, who believes western alienation may remain indefinitely. Story continues below advertisement