Does "North America" Exist?

The Canadian International Council has produced a fantastic graphic that vividly depicts how deeply (or not) North America is integrated economically (See link). In fact, what this chart really depicts is a North American economic space dominated by two bilateral trading relationships; U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico. It is a classic hub-and-spoke situation. Unfortunately, this chart is also suggestive of some of what plagues trilateral relations. In recent years, the comparatively tenuous economic ties between Canada and Mexico have been reflected in the relative frostiness between the two over a host of issues (border security, immigration, visa requirements, regulatory cooperation, etc), with both Mexico City and Ottawa (but mostly Ottawa) electing to pursue issues with Washington bilaterally.

As I wrote back on January 21 (post linked here), the rebilateralization of North America is a troubling development. That economic ties between Canada and Mexico are not strong enough to have forestalled rebilateralization may ultimately prove an unfortunate development for both countries. 

POTUS and the Environment....

I wanted to make a quick post today because of an interesting article in Rolling Stone (Link to story here) about President Obama's efforts to address climate change. In addition to the interesting details on how he plans to address climate change through his executive authority via the EPA, the politics of last week's Keystone XL pipeline delay (my previous post) are also here.

All of it is part of a broader strategy on climate change by the administration, part of which was outlined in February's State of the Union Address. I wrote about that in my post from February 2 (linked here). It remains relevant and mirrors much of what Jeff Goodell says in his Rolling Stone piece, including how Obama's domestic strategy fits into global climate change talks scheduled for 2015. My scribbles didn't make it to Rolling Stone, but it's always nice to read something that mirrors some of your own analysis.

The Keystone Punt and Political Culture....

I was running around town today when my phone started buzzing with alerts from the various news sites I subscribe to. Several of them brought me the news that President Obama had once again delayed a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, this time indefinitely. I couldn't help but laugh. There are plenty of people that think this project is a "no brainer." Yet, as I have been arguing for some time now (see February 2 post, for example), there is little incentive for Obama to approve this project. It now appears that no decision will be made until at least the first quarter of 2015, at the earliest. By then, the approval picture will be even murkier since the President will officially be entering lame-duck territory, and will have to work harder to remain relevant as the jockeying for the 2016 nomination in both parties sucks up all of the political oxygen.

Campaign Finance Floodgates?

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a set of rules limiting the aggregate amount individual donors could contribute to candidates or political action committees. The 5-4 ruling (McCutcheon et al. vs. Federal Election Commission) has been viewed by many as opening the floodgates even further to the corrupting influence of money in the American political process (see story). While the ruling maintains limits on how much can be contributed to any single candidate or action committee, there are now effectively no limits on how many candidates or committees across the nation a wealthy donor could conceivably support.

This latest ruling comes in the wake of the major SCOTUS decision (Citizens United vs. FEC) back in January 2010 that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment and that the government cannot limit the capacity of firms or unions to spend money to support or oppose candidates in elections. Such organizations were still limited in their ability to contribute to specific candidates, but Citizens United took the gloves off where spending on independent advocacy: advertising.

The End in Afghanistan

Yesterday, March 12, marked the formal end of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan after more than a decade. The last 100 soldiers lowered the flag and prepared to exit the country. Canada's role in Afghanistan will be studied for years. At the outset, Canada had little capacity to be engaged in military conflict on the other side of the world. That it did so anyway, and quite well, will be the subject of much study in the years ahead. A number of great books already exist, including Eugene Lang and Janice Gross Stein's The Unexpected War (2008), detailing how Canada became involved in the first place. It's still too early to evaluate many of the lessons from Afghanistan. Was it a victory? A defeat? A failure? Or a success? In too many ways, it was none of the above...

Fodder for the Fire (Keystone)

There were two news items regarding the Keystone XL pipeline project that struck me this week, both raising issues I've touched on in previous posts. Late last week, Saskatchewan Premier, Brad Wall argued that Canada needed to give the Obama Administration more "environmental elbow room" to approve the project. Speaking in Ottawa last Friday at the Manning Networking Conference, Wall suggested that Canada could help its cause on Keystone by getting serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, Canada would undercut the criticism of its own climate change record swirling beneath the Keystone debate and allow President Obama to save face with his most ardent supporters even as he approves the line.

In light U.S. poll numbers released today, Wall's suggestion might actually do the trick.

Obama, Religion, and Trade

If you want to kill a dinner party, you could do no better than mention any of the three words in the title of this post. If you are following U.S. trade policy, these three words in the context of events over the past week would lead you to conclude that President Obama has had a crisis of faith when it comes to the merits of international trade.

At issue is the evident lack of enthusiasm from the White House in pursuit of so-called Trade Promotion Authority from Congress to continue working on two of his signature trade policy initiatives, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)  and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Much has been written about TPA, formerly known as Fast-Track (See Link for a piece on this by yours truly). For most of the postwar period, some form of delegated trade policy authority from Congress to the Executive branch has been a major component of American foreign policy; TPA is one form of this delegation. Yet, for most of the past two decades, this basic delegation of authority has been either hard won and full of caveats or has been allowed to lapse entirely, depriving the U.S. President of a key set of foreign policy tools. The most recent lapse in TPA began when the last delegation of authority expired in 2007. Given President Obama's recent conversion to the merits of international trade, and progress on two major negotiations, advocates of trade liberalisation thought there would be an important push for a renewal of TPA in 2014, in spite of the looming mid-term election campaign. Evidently not.

Amigos and NA Energy

In the wake of the North American Leaders' Summit in Toluca, Mexico last week, Monica Gattinger of the University of Ottawa had a great post on energy issues on the CIPS blog (linked here).  It's hard to think of anyone doing better work on these issues over the last 5 or 6 years. This post is spot on. In addition to the link, I've copied the text of her post below:


By Monica Gattinger

Shale Gale or Shale Fail? Will North America’s Leaders Miss the Boat on Energy?
At the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico this week, Prime Minister Harper, President Obama and President Pena Nieto committed to tasking their respective energy ministers to meet in 2014 to “discuss opportunities to promote common strategies on energy.” Observers and practitioners of things energy in North America would say it’s about time. We haven’t had trilateral talks on energy in years.

But is this too little, too late? North America is in the midst of an energy revolution. The twin technologies of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) and horizontal drilling have unlocked the potential to profitably produce oil and gas from the continent’s vast shale resources.
For the moment, the ‘shale gale’ is mainly filling America’s sails, with U.S. oil and gas production surging to heights mainstream forecasters weren’t predicting a few short years ago. Then, concerns over the country’s energy security and mounting dependence on foreign imports dominated policy debates.

Three Amigos and Pipelines that Keep Giving

Wednesday was the latest edition of the North American Leaders' Summit (NALS). Didn't know there was such a process? You wouldn't be alone. The NALS was created as part of the ill-fated Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in 2005. In addition to all the other agenda items the three bureacracies agreed to work on at the time, the NALS was supposed to have given all that bureaucratic dirty work some political backing. In short, the annual meeting would signal that the North American agenda mattered to them.

Whether North America matters is a subject worthy of debate, and something I've addressed in earlier posts. The first few meetings of the NALS were relatively successful, partly because the "Three Amigos" that created the summit in the first place continued to attend. However, the NALS is not something that President Obama, President Nieto, or Prime Minster Harper created; it's not their baby, so why do it? The 2010 edition of the NALS actually never happened. Prime Minister Harper was busy doing things like hosting the G20 in Toronto and the NALS got set aside. Moreover, each meeting since 2005 has gotten shorter, and shorter. Some might say this is a sign of how great things are going in North America. Nonsense.

Relevance of Academia?

This past weekend, Nicolas Kristof reignited a debate over the role of academia in public life (link to NYT Piece). He was particularly scornful of political science for having allowed the discipline's practices to marginalize it from public life. The reaction to Kristof's piece suggests he struck a nerve.

See:
Monkey Cage
politicalviolenceataglance
saideman semi-spew
tompepinsky
coreyrobin

(Thanks to Bob Murray of the Frontier Center for Public Policy for all of these)
 
My broad reaction to all of this is something along the lines of "thou dost protest too much." Kristof's piece struck a nerve with me as well, but mainly because I am in broad agreement with his basic point. As I wrote in my very first blog post (link), the entire point of the IPE Soap Box is driven by the issues raised by the Stephen Walt article I reference there, some of which are touched on by Kristof. Newspaper columns necessarily simplify issues, so I again recommend you check out the Walt piece (link).

However, the nerve touched by Kristof has me thinking about a few things (three) raised by both Kristof and my disciplinary colleagues who have taken him to task.

COOL not so cool?

 Canada has once again been stiffed by the U.S. Congress (see Globe and Mail). On Tuesday last week, the US Congress finally passed the so-called Farm Bill (Text at Library of Congress), one of the more contentious (the latest has been debated for several years) pieces of legislation regularly considered by Congress, but structured in a way that it ultimately wins bi-partisan support. For obvious reasons, the Farm Bill's provisions appeal to legislators from rural agricultural states, but also appeals to urban members because of provision for low-income food stamp programing (nearly 80% of the funds go to these programs) (See analysis in Washington Post here). The remaining 20% of the Farm Bill continues to fund various agricultural support programs, many of which are the subject of vigorous discussion in the context of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations (a subject for a later blog post).

Canadians were interested in this year's Farm Bill for several reasons, among them language regarding so-called Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) that would impose new consumer labeling for a variety of agricultural product entering the U.S., notably beef, pork, and poultry. Ottawa was hoping that some last minute lobbying in Washington would modify the requirements or perhaps eliminate them altogether (see story). Canada may have had a point. Requiring U.S. importers and retailers to apply more consumer information about where beef, pork, and poultry was born, raised, and slaughtered is likely to raise consumer prices. Moreover, the market for these products in North America is so integrated that tracing the travels of cattle, hogs, and chickens as they cross borders at different stages could be challenging. More importantly, Canadian producers are worried that new labeling requirements will be inherently discriminatory. For example, rather than deal with the hassles of labeling compliance for Canadian or Mexican products, American importers and retailers will simply opt to source more of their products from American producers because it will be easier to demonstrate where it came from.