John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NICK DEARDEN IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Trump’s trade deal plays an even bigger part in the UK election than you realise

“There are concerns about the damage a US trade deal could do to our whole regulatory system – from food standards to consumer protections to workers’ rights”

 

I think there can be little doubt that a trade deal with Trump’s America is one of the biggest and ugliest threats coming out of Brexit.

Such a deal would not only be seen favorably by many of Boris Johnson’s crowd, it would be viewed as a necessity for trade and economic security after leaving the EU.

And Trump – with the highly aggressive, imperialistic impulses we observe in everything he does – would see Britain’s leaving the security of the EU as a wonderful opportunity to dangle a big trade deal before the eyes of the British government, one that would put Trump’s America “in the driver’s seat.”

It would unquestionably mean many fundamental changes for British society.

I doubt many supporters of BREXIT understand that. Many, I think, see only the part about leaving European regulation and population movement behind.

But the part about embracing many American-demanded changes in British society and bending to future whims and demands is not fully appreciated.

I assure you, it is real. America has about five times the population of Britain and far greater wealth, making its dominance in any negotiation simply overwhelming.

As someone living in a country, Canada, which has a large trade treaty with the United States, I can assure readers that the United States becomes ferociously aggressive behind the scenes when negotiating any trade deal, thinking nothing of asking that old institutions be changed or destroyed.

And Canada, despite having just made a very long and difficult effort to negotiate a new version of its previous treaty, one Trump basically trashed, the new one containing many compromises, still waits patiently to learn whether the American government will even approve it.

As a good example of what to expect, just look at the way Trump’s America treats a solid, innovative, and competitive company like Huawei as part of its vicious trade war against China. It’s appalling, much resembling one of America’s many efforts at coups and covert interventions we see.

Canada when it first negotiated “free trade” with the United States didn’t have the option of staying with a huge market like the EU. The British people should consider the matter very carefully in the election.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Harper is such a dishonest man.

First, when you speak of Pacific trade initiatives, any clear-minded person immediately thinks of really important economies like China, Japan, and South Korea.

But that is not what this initiative is about.

This involves mainly countries which in trans-Pacific trade terms are literally insignificant, including Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Further, Harper consistently speaks in such a way that he leads Canadians to believe he is taking real initiative here, but this entire matter is an American initiative.

Again, as with his silly token deals in Latin America with micro-economies of no importance, he is simply tagging along, wagging his tale, with an American initiative.

The truth is that for America especially, these deals with such countries (most have GDPs a tiny, tiny fraction of America’s) are not important economically, their real purpose is to tie these countries into a more dependent and compliant relationship with the United States in geo-political terms.

Harper so far has utterly failed to deliver on anything new and important in diversifying our trade.

Indeed, quite the opposite is the case, he is only tying us in more securely to the United States.

You really cannot be more dishonest in these matters.

Its just about as silly as his parka-clad photo-ops in the Arctic, blubbering about sovereignty when all thinking people know the only genuine long-term threat to Arctic sovereignty is the United States.
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“The Harper government seems to want to make trade deals with the EU, Mexico, South American countries, China and now more Pacific Rim countries.”

We do not see any real initiative where China and the EU are concerned, and those are the places offering us a better, diversified trade future.

Harper’s blubbering is just a disguised way of moving to even greater lock-step with the U.S.
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“What a coincidence:

“Harper passes legislation giving US Security police unfettered independent authority to pursue on Canadian soil, capture and detain any ‘suspect’.

“Obama finally lets Canada ‘in’ on the TTP talks after being denied 12 times before.”

Yes, and he does this at a time when the United States is genuinely approaching becoming a police-state.
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“For those who want to live in their basements, keep right on.
For the rest of the world FREE TRADE has produced jobs and prosperity for all.”

Yes, free trade with significant economies is important.

Free trade with unimportant economies is simply not important .

It’s important for them, but not for us.

Classical Economics 101: it is always the smaller partner who disproportionately benefits.

The U.S. uses such deals to hamstring governments in future disagreements over geo-political and security matters.

Vote our way or your free trade privileges could be lost.

The economic value of this initiative for Canada is not terribly significant.

You don’t seem to understand that basic concept.

What Canada needs is better access with economies like China, the EU, and Japan.

Harper has done nothing in that regard.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEREMY WARNER IN THE TELEGRAPH

Jeremy Warner, you have it exactly right.

Americans have never been free traders at heart.

And I believe that is because the impulse to dominate, very much part of American culture and tradition, is not comfortable with it. Americans raised for generations with Manifest Destiny and “Empire of Liberty” have an instinctive repulsion around compromise with others.

And, following from the same roots, Americans are largely repulsed by the rule of international organizations so necessary to a better-ordered world. Thus everything from the United Nations to various International treaties are viewed with suspicion or even contempt.

Indeed, America often uses free trade, in the form of free trade agreements, as a weapon for political domination.

After all, classical economics tells us that it is the smaller partner who has the most to gain from free trade.

So when the U. S. signs a free trade agreement with some relatively small countries in South America or the Caribbean (as it has recently), it obtains effectively a sledge hammer over the affairs of those countries: don’t get out of line or we’ll abrogate the treaty benefiting you.

Further still, when the U.S. enters into a large and complex free trade agreement – as, for example, the North American Free Trade Agreement – it flexes its muscle whenever it is uncomfortable with a situation rising out of the terms of the agreement.

Students of that historic agreement will know the U.S., on a dozen issues, has simply declared it will not comply, and that is after going through the entire dispute-settling process established by the treaty and losing every decision. For Canada this high-handed behavior has included everything from trade in pork to soft-wood lumber, and for Mexico, it has included many agricultural products plus important services.

Americans, many of them, simply believe they have the best of all possible worlds under the best of all possible governments, and anything which appears to say otherwise is rejected out of hand.

Paul Krugman, despite the Noble Prize, is contaminated with strains of the same thinking we see in Thomas Friedman or Pat Buchanan or a large fraction of the United States Senate.

That is why, in my book about the decline of the American Empire and the rise of China, one of my most important themes was whether the United States would peacefully allow China to compete. I do believe if China is allowed to peacefully compete, it will unquestionably become the world’s most powerful economy in not many decades.

United States’ history puts the odds against it. The rise of Japan was met with immense hostility which eventually caused the Japanese to go to war against the United States, something they had had no intention of doing.

But the American expectation to keep the Pacific Ocean as an American lake made it take policies extremely hostile to Japan. The same motive was still at work only a few decades ago with the American holocaust in Vietnam.