Even Brits Get It

One of the top ranking British Capitalists understands that America is no friend of Free Trade....a message that hits home with Canadians.

Especially after Harpers Softwood lumber sell out.

Now imagine Thomas d'Aquino, president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives saying something like this....


Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, will tonight use his first speech since leaving the employers' organisation to attack Britain's special relationship with a "bullying, protectionist" United States.

Addressing the Institute of Directors in Birmingham, Sir Digby will call for the UK to recover its independence not just from Brussels but from Washington.

"One of the most shocking and worrying aspects of loss of independence has been a refusal to stand up to the United States in so many areas," he will argue in a speech called "I want my country back".

Sir Digby will say he is not talking about Iran, Afghanistan or Lebanon, but about areas where "our country could have and should have stood up and fought a protectionist, bullying America - in the fields of trade, investment and the rule of law"

Nope neither can I.

Thoms d'Aquino and the CCCE are integrationists, a quizzling class of capitalist compradors. The FTA and NAFTA were never about Free Trade but an intergrated market in North America, the Contientalist dream of Bay Street.

An example of this contientalism is TD PriceWaterhouse.Whose ads in America are for its investment banking business Price Waterhouse that was bought out by Canada's TD bank. In Canada the TD Bank, formerly the Toronto Domion, now includes TD Price Waterhouse, the former Canada Trust and TDNorthBank an American bank.

The reason the banks want the ability to merge in Canada is for market capitalization that would allow them to buy into the American market even more.

And this is the whole short coming of the CCCE they want our poilitcal economy to look like their intergrated North American boardrooms. The shortsightedness of the Contientalists produced Harpers softwood deal.

But capitalism is global in reach. And this is anathema to the conservative continetalists. They do want a steady state capitalist economy, one that shuts out the world and locks us into Fortress North America. But as always the wiff and poof of capitalism gets in the way.

When the big Canadian Resource companies Teck-Caminco, Inco, Falconbridge began trying to buy each other out to create the ultimate Resource monopoly, they left themselves open to take over by equally voracious global capitalists from abroad.

Their failure was to look abroad for investment opportunities. They really were risk averse to playing in the global marketplace. They only looked as far as their back yard. Unlike Indias Mittal Steel which invests globally and owns major steel companies in the U.S. and now owns Defasco.

Contientalism in Canada has been tried before its called the Auto Pact, and today as the Big 3 American auto companies collapse before the onslaught of global competition, we find ourselves bailing them out, while Toyota, Honda, and their global competitiors invest in Canada.

Free Trade means you are willing to play in the global marketplace not just stay at home buying up each others businesses. Genuine Free Trade is not contientalism, it is in essence Fair Trade globally.

While the economies of rich countries will continue to grow, "a key policy issue should be to find ways to distribute that growth beyond the super-wealthy who have benefited the most for the past two or so decades of growth."An interesting exercise is now underway in the United States to deal with these challenges. It is called The Hamilton Project, and its leaders include Robert Rubin, former U.S. Secretary the Treasury and now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup Inc. We don't have anything like this in Canada.A recent discussion paper for The Hamilton Project argued that "achieving an equitable distribution of the benefits and costs of trade will require strong, effective government policies," adding that "the need for such policies will only grow more important, as nations like China and India become increasingly dominant forces in the world economy."

Also See

Softwood

Free Trade

Fordism

GM

Free Market

AFRICA

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

Libertarian Economics

Monoop

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