• non_burglar@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    I agree, but we should have diversified our trade in the 90s when we realized Mulroney’s us/can free trade agreement wasn’t going to last forever, and when it was becoming obvious that China was rising fast as a manufacturing powerhouse.

    IMO, we should have forged a tightly integrated trade agreement with the EU and spearheaded the Trans Pacific Partnership way sooner.

    We’re in the pickle of current events because we were largely complacent at the table of a global market that marched ahead without us in the ways we wanted.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      15 hours ago

      The problem is that it’s very difficult to move from a trading partner you share a land border with to ones that you have to cross the world’s largest oceans to get to. Not just difficult, but largely undesirable. While national security might argue for diverse trading partners, short of applying extraordinary incentives business is going to go where its easy and profitable to go, and that’s the US.

      Since the nineties Canada has signed and ratified 15 free trade agreements. But none of that matters when we have one of the world’s largest and wealthiest markets right next to us. Not unless we’re willing to take extraordinary measures to change that dynamic.