A New Agreement on Internal Trade?

Last week, Canada's premiers wrapped up the summer meeting of the Council of the Federation in Whitehorse, Yukon. Item number one on the agenda, the elimination of internal trade barriers. While

The Source of Jaw Jaw Over Trade Trade

the press release referred to the "agreement" as a "...ground-breaking agreement that will support..." the premiers' "...vision for promoting trade, investment and labor mobility across provincial and territorial boundaries,"






the reality was something far less than "ground-breaking" and really amounts to an agreement continue talking (press release linked here). I have written at some length in this blog about the neoclassical stages of integration, including their application to domestic settings (see link). Ideally, last week's meetings in Whitehorse would have aimed to build upon the Agreement on Internal Trade and the New West Partnership.  To most observers of international trade, the kinds of things being talked about in Whitehorse are the domain of world trade negotiations. And that's definitely true.

However, what's fascinating about the talks in Whitehorse is how pervasive the very same kinds of issues can be in a domestic setting-- particularly a federal setting like Canada's in which power is divided and shared over different jurisdictions.

A Curmudgeonly Grump or Two About the North American Leaders' Summit

I really wish I could get excited about North American Leaders' Summits, but they've become a big, disappointing bag of snores.

I've complained on this blog about the lack of ambition for North America before. In fact, my second post to this blog in 2014 was a bit of an obituary to Robert Pastor, a long time proponent of closer North American cooperation. Sadly, there are several other posts, here, here and here, wherein I complain about this.

Slate magazine described the Three Amigos Summit as "North America's hottest leaders getting together for a steamy three-way." Indeed, photo ops were about as substantive as it got. Trudeau jogging with Nieto? Obama and Trudeau snapping selfies from the PM's Office? Phuleeeze.... Is the best we can do here?