{"id":36618,"date":"2016-12-11T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36618"},"modified":"2016-12-10T11:26:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T16:26:43","slug":"re-negotiating-nafta-and-the-defence-production-sharing-program-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/11\/re-negotiating-nafta-and-the-defence-production-sharing-program-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-negotiating NAFTA (and the Defence Production Sharing Program, too)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Campbell<\/a> is in favour of bringing NAFTA up-to-date and reminds us that there’s another diplomatic item that could use modernization at the same time:<\/p>\n

In my opinion, if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or the next Conservative leader is really interested in restoring Canada to a leading position in real, practical, long term peacekeeping then (s)he will abandon the United Nations and, instead, turn Canada into a free trade powerhouse by dropping our remaining protectionist measures, as Maxime Bernier and Colin Robertson both advocate, and making deals with all comers. And it is important to remember that \u201cdeals\u201d involve two sides and both sides must gain something which means that both sides probably \u201cgive\u201d something, too, and that produces short term \u201closers\u201d and it is politically important to try to \u201csoften\u201d the transition for those who are bound to lose in the short term. But, in the mid to long term most losses are \u201ccovered\u201d by gains in new products and services and the utilitarian goal of \u201cthe greatest good for the greatest number\u201d is achieved \u2026 most of the time.<\/p>\n

One of the things Colin Robertson mentioned was shipbuilding and it leads me to consider that one of the things we want to renew if or when we must renegotiate NAFTA is the Defence development sharing agreement between Canada and the United States of America<\/a>. The stated objective of the existing (since 1963) agreement are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. To assist in maintaining the Defense Production Sharing Program at a high level by making it possible for Canadian firms to perform research and development work undertaken to meet the requirements of U.S. armed forces.<\/li>\n
  2. To utilize better the industrial scientific and technical resources of the United States and Canada in the interest of mutual defense.<\/li>\n
  3. To make possible the standardization and interchangeability of a larger amount of the equipment necessary for the defense of United States and Canada.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Defence Production Sharing Program is, too often, hamstrung by US (and Canadian) protectionist measures<\/a> and it needs to be brought more fully into the area of bilateral<\/strong> free trade. I am not suggesting that the Pentagon would ever let, say, a significant shipbuilding contract to a Canadian yard but it must be possible for Canadian shipyards and factories and service providers to bid on US defence contracts on at least a \u201cnear equal\u201d basis and vice-versa, of course. This, free(er) trade in defence materiel and services is one area where we, North Americans, can learn from the Europeans<\/a>. I am not suggesting that Canada should abandon the idea of having a national defence industrial base but, rather, that we should have a base that fits, neatly, into a larger continental base that is, somehow, connected to other allied defence production systems.<\/p>\n

    So, broadly, when (if) President elect Trump says he wants to renegotiate NAFTA we should, indeed, say \u201cbring it on!\u201d But we should go into negotiations with our eyes wide open, prepared to surrender some \u201closers,\u201d as good bridge players do, in order to finesse some winners for ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Ted Campbell is in favour of bringing NAFTA up-to-date and reminds us that there’s another diplomatic item that could use modernization at the same time: In my opinion, if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or the next Conservative leader is really interested in restoring Canada to a leading position in real, practical, long term peacekeeping then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,13],"tags":[432,320,516,182],"class_list":["post-36618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-usa","tag-diplomacy","tag-freetrade","tag-mexico","tag-nafta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9wC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36619,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36618\/revisions\/36619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}