The Auto Pact

Canada and the United States signed the Automotive Products Trade Agreement (Auto Pact) in 1965, thus resolving a competitive crisis in Canada's auto industry and extending that industry's vitality for another 35 years, until a decision of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in February 2000 determined that the Pact violated international trading rules. Following an unsuccessful appeal by Canada to the WTO's Appellate Body, the pact formally came to an end in February 2001. For policymakers and scholars concerned with international trade, the story of the Pact presents a fascinating case in its own right. The great value of this remarkable book, however, is its elucidation of the main issue underlying the Pact and its forced ending: the relationship between international trade rules on the one hand and investment measures intended to encourage local economic activity on the other. In this connection the Canadian auto industry and– centered in Windsor, Ontario, directly across the river from Detroit, the heart of the industry in the U.S.and– offers an intensely concentrated sample of the triple nexus of investment, labour and trade that lies at the core of economic development worldwide. Sixteen expert authors, both practitioners and academics, here open perspectives on this nexus that are of profound significance for the future of international trade. These encompass such matters as the following: and•the vulnerabilities of a local community dependent on trade and open borders; and•labour union tensions engendered by trade rule 'levelling' that takes little or no account of national or local economic realities; and•implications for developing countries of the WTO finding that a production-to-sales ratio is a prohibited export subsidy; and•the impact of Mexico's role under NAFTA on the Canadian auto industry; national and local regulation of government subsidies intended to attract investment; and•ongoing multinational efforts to create a multilateral regime to protect and regulate foreign direct investment; and and•the persistent failure of the WTO to reach a consensus on labour standards despite the clear provisions of major international law instruments. All these issues and more are brought into sharp focus by the history of the Auto Pact and the implications of its demise. For this reason, this collection of insightful essays will be of incomparable value to professionals in every area of international trade. The Auto Pact: Investment, Labour and the WTO was produced with the support of the Canadian-American Research Centre for Law and Policy at the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor.

The 1965 Canada-United States Automotive Trade agreement fundamentally reshaped relations between the automotive business and the state in both countries and represented a significant step toward the creation of an integrated North American economy. Breaking from previous conceptions of the agreement as solely a product of intergovernmental negotiation, Dimitry Anastakis's Auto Pact argues that the 'big three' auto companies played a pivotal role - and benefited immensely - in the creation and implementation of this new automotive regime. With the border effectively erased by the agreement, the pact transformed these giant enterprises into truly global corporations. Drawing from newly released archival sources, Anastakis demonstrates that, for Canada's automotive policy makers, continentalism was a form of economic nationalism. Although the deal represented the end of any notion of an indigenous Canadian automotive industry, significant economic gains were achieved for Canadians under the agreement. Anastakis provides a fresh and alternative view of the auto pact that places it firmly within contemporary debates about the nature of free trade as well as North American - and, indeed, global - integration. Far from being a mere artefact of history, the deal was a forebearer to what is now known as 'globalization.'

The papers in this collection provide important new material on this industry in crisis which is critical to the economies of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The authors examine major changes in the industry, and how government policies in the three countries have promoted, protected and shaped it.

From the back cover: In this study, economist Ross Perry shows that all indicators point to a further restriction in the Canadian auto industry, resulting in further shrinkage of employment and the possibility of a major deterioration in the country's balance of payments. While the objective of the Auto Pact and Canadian automotive trade policy has always been job creation, Perry concludes that it will be increasingly difficult for the Canadian industry to be both viable and to generate jobs for the industrial heartland of Southern Ontario. Perry examines areas of specialization where Canada, with its advantages in energry-intensive products, could be competitive in the world market, and he outlines the two basic options for national policymakers - restructuring the industry for viability or resisting its decline.

Autonomous State provides the first detailed examination of the Canadian auto industry, the country's most important economic sector, in the post-war period. In this engrossing book, Dimitry Anastakis chronicles the industry's evolution from the 1973 OPEC embargo to the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and looks at its effects on public policy, diplomacy, business enterprise, workers, consumers, and firms. Using an immense array of archival sources, and interviews with some of the key actors in the events, Anastakis examines a fascinating array of topics in recent auto industry and Canadian business and economic history: the impact of new safety, emissions, and fuel economy regulations on the Canadian sector and consumers, the first Chrysler bailout of 1980, the curious life and death of the 1965 Canada-US auto pact, the 'invasion' of Japanese imports and transplant operations, and the end of aggressive auto policy-making with the coming of free trade. More than just an examination of the auto industry, the book provides a rethinking of Canada's tumultuous post-OPEC political and economic evolution, helping to explain the current tribulations of the global auto sector and Canada's place within it.