Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 02

Trade Darrell Dexter Well, thank you. I think Vincente Fox was a little less cool. Maryscott Greenwood He was. But he wasn’t the president at the time. Darrell Dexter So, Colin, China, 1.3 Billion people. Am I right about that? It’s the fastest growing market for Atlantic Canada in the last little while, and now what? Colin Robertson And expected to surpass the United States by 2030 as the biggest economy in the world. Already a middle class of 400 mil- lion, which is a market that we obviously want to get into, and last December, Prime Minister Trudeau was over there meeting with the Chinese Premier. But there were parts of what we were asking for that the Chinese Premier wasn’t so keen on – the Progressive trade agenda – and so every- thing sort of stalled. Now we’re in a much more difficult situation: collateral damage, in a way, to upholding the rule of law which we are committed to do – although our current ambassador to China certainly compli- cated things again yesterday with some comments. How that’s all going to end, I’m not sure, but it’s not looking good because we’re seeing not the panda side of China, we’re seeing the dragon side of China. And we’ve become a bit of a proxy, I think, for thing is scripted. And then in his an- nouncement, he referred to people com- ing into the United States from Mexico as murderers and rapists. That was the day he launched, and you know what, it got worse. Mexico was really a target. We have heard his rhetoric about people coming from Muslim countries – a lot of it fundamentally very offensive rhetoric coming from the President of the Unit- ed States. And then he said one slightly negative thing about Justin Trudeau, and Canada lost its mind: “Oh my God! How could you insult our Prime Minister?” I’m thinking, he just said he was weak, you know – “low energy Jeb.” I was going to get a trade deal, and you know what, there were several moments of time in the negotiations where the President was so fundamentally insulting to Canada I thought, “That’s it. The PMO is going to say forget it, we don’t need your deal.” It would be politically popular in Canada to drop the gloves and go dukes-up for Trudeau to just fight with Trump. Cana- dians would reward him politically for that in the short-term, but Canada stayed cool, and it was like water off a duck’s back. Trump can say whatever he wants; we’re going to get the best deal for people and that’s where we are. So, I’m hoping that the Democrats in Congress can take a page from USMCA on the new NAFTA, can take a page from Mexico and from Canada, and just keep cool and get the deal done. That’s my hope. We’ll see; it’s going to be a long slog. the United States because the bigger pic- ture is that the China-U.S. quarrel on trade threatens to get even worse. We’re in this period after Buenos Aires when Xi Jinping met with Donald Trump over dinner and they said, “Alright, let’s have a kind of truce period otherwise we’re going to impose even higher tariffs on both sides, and that will involve cutting off goods and things.” Now as Scotty commented earlier when we did some radio, there’s a silver lining potentially for Canadian lobster and a few other things, but I’m afraid that’s out of the picture right now because I think the Chinese are taking retaliation on anything Canadian going into China, as we know. Youdo notwant towindup likeMr. Kovrig or Mr. Spavor. I was posted in China, great- er China, for five years and I visited Chinese jails, and they are not a place that you want to spend any time. The sentencing of Mr. Schellenberg on drug-related charges has, affronted Canadians a bit, but in fact the Chinese do this. A couple of times when I was posted there, growing up, they used to have executions of drug smugglers because Chinese regard this quite seriously; it dates back to 150 years of humiliation, the opium wars, and other things. It is a related issue, but it is not surprising, so I think in terms of China, it’s going to be a while before things get better. That tells me that that we have to follow up fromwhere Scotty left us, with the Democratic Congress. Atlantic Canada is fast growing in in- volvement with China, but my advice is that we wait and see what happens there. “Just look around this room and see if you can figure out how many things might have steel or aluminum in them. It’s a lot, you know. Everything from your iPhone to this camera pole to the bus you took to get here. So, the steel and aluminum tariffs were levied by the United States against Canada, Mexico and other countries.” — Maryscott Greenwood April/May 2019 // Canadian Government Executive / 31