On November 22nd, APEC leaders vowed not to raise trade barriers over the next 12 months to the delight of PM Steven Harper. For the past few weeks, Harper has been discussing the issue with world leaders in an effort to keep free trade alive during the economic downturn. He’s also managed to sign a free trade agreement with Colombia just this week. Harper maintains the leading cause of the Great Depression was a result of bad decisions made by policy-makers, one of which was shutting down borders to trade in order to protect domestic jobs.

So how will the Obama administration react when in takes office in under 2 months time? It’s no secret that throughout the 2008 election campaign, Obama promised to restrict free trade agreements which he blames for the loss of US jobs due to outsourcing. He also mentioned renegotiating major trade agreements such as NAFTA. At the same time, currently serving President Bush advocates the exact opposite – keep borders open and allow free trade to continue.

That being said, it’s possible APEC’s decision not to introduce new trade barriers could have no bearing on the future policies of the US. Obama seems adamant on introducing protectionist policies to protect his country and a vow by Bush won’t change that.

It will be especially interesting to see how Obama’s protectionist policies coexist with Harper’s insistence to keep borders open and free trade flowing. Such a paradox will be especially significant when trade agreements between Canada and the US are renegotiated in the near future.

Related posts:

1. Feds Sell Provinces to World Trade Organization Under Cover of “Buy American” Seemingly lost amidst the Olympic shuffle last week was an...
2. NDP Leader Jack Layton Proposes "Buy Canadian" Strategy It all started when Barack Obama included “Buy American” language...
3. Flaherty, G7 Reject “Populist” Protectionist Policies At a recent G7 meeting in Rome, finance ministers and...
4. I’ll Trade You! How Global Bartering Might Bail Us Out of This Recession Remember when you used to trade marbles? Or baseball cards?...
5. I’ll Trade You! How Global Bartering Might Bail Us Out of This Recession Remember when you used to trade marbles? Or baseball cards?...

Tags: APEC, Economy, trade, united states

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.