Written Comments On United States Canada Free Trade Negotiations

Building a Partnership: The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement is a selection of papers and commentary, drawn from a September 1998 conference held at Michigan State University, examines in detail the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. The work underscores how this pact paved the way for the North American Free Trade Agreement. The work also includes essays written by Canadian and American policy makers, including Derek Burney and James Baker, III; these are augmented by a series of insightful papers and commentary written by scholars and informed observers. Roger Porter, from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, summarizes and places the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement into a framework for the future, one that includes trade agreements with other countries in the Western Hemisphere. This analysis of Canada's bilateral trade agreement with the United States is timely and thought-provoking. With Contributions By: James A. Baker, III James Blanchard Derek H. Burney William A. Dymond Geza Feketekuty Michael Hart Gary Hufbauer Barbara Kotschwar Mordechai E. Krenin Richard G. Lipsey Peter McPherson Mustafa Mohatarem Sylvia Ostry Roger B. Porter David B. Schweikhardt Konrad von Finckstein Paul Wonnacott.

On 2 January 1988, Canada and the United States signed what was then the most comprehensive free trade agreeement the world had ever seen. This book is the story of those FTA negotiations, the preparations for and conduct of the negotiations, as well as the ideas and issues behind them. From their unique perspective as participants, Michael Hart, Bill Dymond, and Colin Robertson capture the drama and the personalities involved in the long struggle to make a free trade deal. They describe the extensive consultations, the turf-fighting among insiders, the innate caution of both politicians and bureaucrats, and the need to cultivate powerful constituencies in order to overcome the inertia of conventional wisdom.

Canada is the largest trading partner of the United States, and the two governments have begun negotiations for a free trade agreement which would tie their relationship even closer. This study analyzes the difficult problems that must be addressed in the negotiations - including quite different perceptions in the two countries of what constitutes fair trade. It suggests several possible ways of reducing differences over subsidies and countervailing duties. It also addresses the exchange rate relationship between the two dollars, and how this affects the trade outlook. An appendix by John Williamson calculated a fundamental equilibrium exhange rate for the Canadian dollar.