QUEBEC CITY — As protectionist impulses heighten, former ambassadors have risen up to defend NAFTA and call for more vocal support for continued free trade initiatives.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Gordon Giffin, speaking at the annual conference of the North American Supercorridor Coalition (NASCO) in Quebec City, said economic inefficiencies and dire consequences would be the direct result of increased anti-trade policies and more vocal opposition is needed in order to drown out protectionist cries. 

"Even in good times, there is a healthy skepticism about free trade and free-trade deals in the United States," he said. "That tendency is enhanced and exacerbated by the stresses of our current economic challenges, which results in a perverse policy prescription like ‘Buy American’ which is being advanced by our Congress in the United States and which is, in effect, protectionism on steroids."

He used a litany of statistics to prove that both Canada and the U.S. have benefited from NAFTA — including that from 1993 to 2006, trade between the two countries grew from $297 billion to $930 billion, U.S. employment rose 25 percent, real hourly wages in the United States rose 24 percent, and U.S. manufacturing output rose 58 percent.

"Without going on and on, by any measure, this has been a success," he said.

Nevertheless, he added, opponents of free trade have been banging protectionist drums, and he believes it’s time for NAFTA supporters to respond. "If we don’t speak out as advocates, the naysayers will carry the day." 

Protectionist winds in both countries blow from
time to time, but the trade weather forecast has
surely been alarming these last six months.

He said NAFTA has become shorthand for the perceived shortcomings of globalized free trade, and political opponents are working for measures that, in his view, resemble the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which brought U.S. tariffs to their highest protective levels ever and arguably worsened the impending Depression. 

His concerns over protectionism were echoed by Michael Kergin, former Canadian ambassador to the U.S., who said North Americans can profit from their own natural economies of scale and increase their cooperation to compete even more effectively in the global economy.

"Economic downturns inevitably increase pressures to resort to protectionism. Yet the impulse behind NAFTA was to insulate somewhat all three partners from these protectionist prescriptions for instant economic gratification," he said. "I know of no serious economist who lays the blame for the current U.S. job losses exclusively, or even in part, at NAFTA’s doorstep."

He said free-trade movements in other parts of the world — including the expansion of the European Union to include countries of the former Warsaw Pact, the Mercosur regional trade agreement spearheaded by Brazil, and the consolidation of Chinese ties by the Association of South-East Asian nations (ASEAN) — prove the need for continued, and even expanded free trade in North America.

In his address to delegates from Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, Kergin called for dismantling the barriers that prevent NAFTA suppliers from participating in federal and local projects financed though official stimulus funds.

This last point is particularly important, he said, given there have been incidents in all three NAFTA countries where North American companies have been shut out of infrastructure projects. 

"Now is an opportune time for our leaders to show the vision, tempered by pragmatism, of their predecessors some 15 years ago," said Kergin. "All three countries, not just the United States, have some form of exclusionary legislation, principally at state and provincial levels," he said.

— by Allan Janssen