Minister Van Loan Promotes Deeper Canada-U.S. Ties

(Minister of International Trade)

The Honourable Peter Van Loan, Minister of International Trade, today wrapped up his first official visit to Washington, D.C., where he and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk agreed to hold regular meetings to keep the Canada-U.S. trade relationship strong.

“The United States is Canada’s most valuable trading partner and it is important that we have meetings twice a year to seize the opportunities and address the challenges that lie ahead of us,” said Minister Van Loan. “Building on our already strong economic partnership with the United States helps create jobs, stimulates our economies and ensures our long-term competitiveness. I look forward to welcoming Ambassador Kirk to Canada this summer.”

In 2009, Canada-U.S. bilateral trade in goods and services was over $592.7 billion, with $1.6-billion worth of goods and services crossing the Canada-U.S. border every single day.

In addition, Minister Van Loan and Ambassador Kirk discussed a wide range of issues of mutual interest, including the importance of resisting protectionist tendencies and continuing to promote free and open trade, additional access to procurement markets on a permanent basis, the softwood lumber agreement and future multilateral trade agreement opportunities. The Minister emphasized that a lasting economic recovery should be the top priority for our partners worldwide. Read more here.

DFAIT Consultations on NAFTA Regulatory Cooperation

(DFAIT)

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) is requesting input on areas for increased cooperation amongst Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to reduce “significant regulatory-based differences” that hamper Canadian competitiveness. A copy of the Notice published in the Canada Gazette is available here.

Interested parties have until May 26, 2010 to file submissions with DFAIT identifying opportunities to reduce significant barriers in a range of areas including: standards, technical regulations, and conformity assessment procedures for industrial and agricultural products, as well as sanitary and phytosanitary measures.

Obama’s Arrival Sets North American Integration Adrift

(Embassy)

U.S. President Barack Obama officially takes his place as one of the so-called Three Amigos during the North American leaders’ summit in Mexico this weekend. Yet he will be joining a trilateral alliance that has been in a state of virtual hibernation since his predecessor, George W. Bush, left the scene.

Instead, he and counterparts Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderon will be confronting the reality of a continental alliance adrift and in sore need of political direction and leadership.

With the Bush-era Security and Prosperity Partnership having largely petered out from a lack of direction and a toxic public image, the leaders have a chance to reinvigorate or reinvent the trilateral alliance.

But with three distracted leaders of questionable compatibility, and an apparent lack of a grand vision for the way forward, the future of this forum—and North American integration in general—remains far from certain. […]

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae cautioned against aggressively pursuing continental integration at a time when the “American Congress is in a deeply protectionist mood.”

Pointing to Canada-U.S. trade disputes such as softwood lumber, black liquor and COOL, as well as immigration concerns related to Mexico, he said: “It’s pretty hard to talk about integration when there are such significant barriers to flow of people and of goods and services among the countries.” Read more here.

Toward a Better Border

(Canadian International Council/Brookings Institute)

Christopher Sands, Senior Fellow — Hudson Institute

Executive Summary

In an age of international terrorism and illegal immigration, a well-functioning border is vital for homeland security. For the United States and Canada, however, it is also vital for national prosperity, for each is the other’s largest trading partner, and much of that trade is in intermediate goods that support the bi-national production of finished products, most notably autos. Roughly 400,000 individuals cross the border every day, many with deadlines for delivering cargo or reporting to work. This trade and travel supports jobs throughout both countries.

Since 9/11, however, security concerns have trumped economic ones, leading to delays and higher costs for the cross-border movement of people and goods. Several initiatives have attempted to address these problems, most notably the U.S.-Canada Smart Border Action Plan and the Security and Prosperity Partnership. They have achieved some success, but the unfortunate reality is that the border today remains a source of considerable user frustration and economic drag. This report focuses on the policy process itself and on the conditions that shape its outcomes. In particular, it argues that progress requires taking greater account of the variety of ways in which the border is used by different categories of users in different places.

There are four geographically distinct corridors or “gateways” along the U.S.-Canada border: the Cascadian gateway in the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes gateway in the Midwest, the extensive Rural gateway in less populated areas, and the continent spanning Perimeter gateway. Each requires a different mix of technology and infrastructure to respond to unique regional conditions.

There are also five identifiable types of U.S.-Canadian border users: Commercial shippers, energy shippers, regular commuters, amateur travelers, and, of course, illicit border crossers. Each is found in varying degrees within the four border regions, further enriching the heterogeneity of the border. Yet the post-2001 border strategy has emphasized uniformity, with one-sizefits- all rules that ignore this diversity, and at times have falsely equated conditions at the U.S.-Canadian border with those at the more difficult U.S.-Mexican border.

At present, borderlands communities have no channel for regular input on key policy issues, and regional differences are often overlooked by “one border” rules and programs that result in uneven performance. Some categories of U.S. border users have seen their specific needs addressed, but much more could be done to improve communications and to customize policy implementation. Moreover, the U.S. government agencies concerned with economic flows and those responsible for national security could do far more to reconcile their competing purposes in a fashion that optimizes security and prosperity.

President Obama acknowledged during his visit to Ottawa in February 2009 that too often in the past, the United States has “taken Canada for granted,” allowing problems to fester and opportunities to work together to be lost. Such an opportunity now exists, and not only because there is a new administration in Washington and a new willingness on the part of the Canadians to think boldly about working with the U.S. The current recession has hit the auto industry with particular force, and the auto industry is both the biggest component in U.S.-Canada trade and a prime example of the bi-national integration of North American manufacturing. The “Detroit Three” U.S. auto makers depend on an efficient border, as does Michigan, the state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate. More generally speaking, for many American firms to remain competitive in the global economy, their extensive Canadian supply chains and just-in-time inventory systems must function well, and the current recession makes this an opportune moment to tackle any problems occasioned by the border.

The keys to making the best use of this opportunity are to partially decentralize border policy management and thereby enable problems to be identified and resolved with greater precision and sensitivity to regional concerns. If these process improvements are undertaken by the Obama administration, the underbrush of concerns that fragments responses from regions and user types and bedevils the U.S.- Canadian border could be cleared away, and a path toward an inclusive consensus on the future of the U.S.-Canadian frontier could emerge. In short, the time is right for instituting reforms that will resolve particular problems and open the door to a broader dialogue about a “new frontier” for the 21st century, a truly modern border that could be a place of innovation and serve as a model for progress on the management of other borders. With that in mind, this paper recommends the following:

1) Create and engage a state-level Homeland Security Network;

2) Ensure that performance evaluations of Customs and Border Protection Port Directors and other local representatives of the federal government include assessments of their efforts to develop relationships with local governments and stakeholder groups;

3) Emulate the 30-point U.S.-Canada “Smart Border Action Plan” on a local level;

4) Empower local federal officials in ways that ensure greater lateral communication and resource-sharing without recourse to Washington;

5) Adopt a Total Quality Management (TQM) model of continuous process improvement at the border;

6) Congress should authorize funds for a Border Security Pilot Project Challenge Fund to test new ideas;

7) Publicly adopt a two-speed approach to the Canadian and Mexican borders;

8) Reform but do not abandon the Security and Prosperity Partnership;

9) Form a U.S.-Canada or North American Joint Infrastructure Planning Commission.

Related:

• U.S. Canada Border Management Policy (PR Newswire)
• Toward a New Frontier (CIC) Draft Version
• “Toward a Better Border” (CIC/Brookings Institute Conference)
• How to fix the mess at the Canada-U.S. (National Post)
• More flexibility needed at border: U.S. think-tank (Canada.com)

Is NAFTA Road About Trade — Or Treachery?

(Gabriela Rico — Arizona Daily Star)

It is a steel and concrete corridor that will run right through the Old Pueblo, connecting Mexico City to Edmonton, Alberta.

Its purpose is to facilitate trade among the three countries and minimize traffic and congestion for residents. Or is it evidence of a move afoot to intertwine the three North American countries and blur the lines of sovereignty? That’s a matter of opinion.

The Canamex Corridor, as defined by Congress in the 1995 National Highway Systems Designation Act, is a joint effort involving Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Utah and Montana.

The transportation portion calls for the development of a continuous four-lane roadway from Mexico through the U.S. into Canada.

There are two other trade corridors: One runs from the southern Mexico city of Manzanillo, Colima, through Laredo, Texas, to Canada’s Prairie-to-Ports Gateway & Inland Port, anchored by Saskatoon, Moose Jaw and Regina in Saskatchewan. The other corridor veers east from Laredo through Kansas City up to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As officials in all three countries grapple with the logistics of creating such thoroughfares, there is growing concern that the so-called “superhighways” are a visible step toward the blending of economies, cultures and resources. Read more.

NAFTA Superhighway: The Debate Continues…

(The Ottawa Citizen — Don Butler • Video: CNN)

Are North American governments secretly conspiring to build a “NAFTA superhighway,” four football fields wide, from Mexico to Canada to bypass regulatory controls and whisk goods swiftly to market?

If you believe some right-wing websites in the United States, it’s all but a fait accompli. They insist a gargantuan project is in the works that will carve a 365-metre-wide swath through the continent’s heart, with 10traffic lanes, rail lines for freight and passenger trains, fibre-optic cable lines and pipelines carrying oil, gas and water.

Conservative commentators Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly and websites such as WorldNetDaily link the supposed superhighway to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a series of agreements being negotiated among the United States, Canada and Mexico. They fear the SPP will lead to a North American union similar to the European Union, with a resulting loss of American sovereignty.

If you’ve never heard of the NAFTA superhighway, it may be because no such plan actually exists. The whole idea, one American official recently told a congressional committee, is an “urban myth.”

But some remain unconvinced, in part because the largely secretive SPP process has created an information void that provides oxygen for conspiracy theorists.

Most SPP work is being done by 19 working groups that meet behind closed doors. The project surfaces publicly only when politicians from the three countries gather for periodic updates, like yesterday’s SPP ministerial meetings in Ottawa.So far, anxiety about the purported NAFTA Superhighway has been confined to the United States. Activists in Canada, by and large, don’t quite know what to make of it, although the Sierra Club has expressed concern that NAFTA super-corridors could be used to pipe Canadian water to American markets. Read the complete article.

C-TPAT: Requirements & Advantages (Part 3)

How C-TPAT and FAST offer competitive advantages to North American manufacturers over Chinese counterparts. Discussion also briefly touches on ACE and the e-manifest system and the Security & Prosperity Partnership (SPP) as it relates to expanding the range of goods included under the NAFTA and its Rules of Origin.

Related: Part 1, Part 2

Slow Progress, Frustration Mark SPP Summit

(Embassy – Michelle Collins)

Experts say the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership has become its own worst enemy.

As North American leaders wrapped up the fourth annual Security and Prosperity Partnership leaders’ summit in New Orleans yesterday [Tuesday], concerns over its lack of progress are being raised.

From the business community, in the form of a North American Competitiveness Council report, there was a sense of disappointment in the progress made on priorities, along with a near-urgent call directed at political leaders to strengthen North America’s competitiveness

While the NACC, comprised of representatives from some of the biggest and most powerful companies on the continent, reported that progress has been slow on several of the priorities, such as emergency management, integrating auto sector regulations and the implementation of enhanced driver’s licenses, it described the trilateral framework as essential for all three counties’ economic success.

Despite the frustrations raised, the report concluded by urging a new U.S. administration to continue to seek progress on the SPP priorities and called for cooperation to “turn around public misperceptions” that threaten to make the issue of North American competitiveness largely irrelevant.

In the past couple of weeks leading up the New Orleans summit, the lack of progress being made through this trilateral forum has contributed to a growing debate in Canada about the value of meeting with both the leaders of Mexico and the U.S. to address such a wide range of issues.

While trilateral engagement has its place for discussing common issues such as the environment, the problems of competition, trade and the challenges of the Canada-U.S. border are better suited to bilateral talks, said former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Allan Gotlieb. With so little achieved on the dozens and dozens of priorities initiated by the SPP, Mr. Gotlieb said, it’s become difficult to bring on any real momentum.

“So admirable as its purpose is, one has to say it’s been quite disappointing in its results,” Mr. Gotlieb said. “Trilateralism should continue, but the Canada-U.S. relationship needs to be reinvigorated by bilaterals, and the flagship for doing that is the prime minister with the president.”

University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris said a lack of momentum for the SPP can be attributed to the lack of an overarching vision, particularly when it comes to the Canada-U.S. relationship.

“Some of the items are useful, the issue of regulatory co-operation, for example,” Mr. Paris said. “But there are larger issues about what the next steps will be for our relations with the U.S. and for North America. Without a vision of a goal to strive toward together, a vision that is driven and articulated by political leaders, this kind of work-a-day agenda is not likely to provide the momentum to move forward.” Read the complete article.

CNN-Lou Dobbs: New Orleans SPP Talks

A harsh critic of NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), as well as the purported “North American Union” (NAU), CNN pundit Lou Dobbs reports on the talks being held in New Orleans between the leaders of the US, Canada and Mexico.