Jamieson Greer tells CBC News that tariffs will feature even in renegotiated CUSMA
U.S. President Donald Trump’s point man on trade talks says Canada needs to accept that tariffs will be a part of any deal with the administration, including renewal of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
In interviews with two CBC News journalists on Capitol Hill just after Trump’s state of the union address Tuesday night, U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer suggested Canada can’t expect to land a trade agreement that is free of tariffs.
“When we go to other countries, and we make a deal with them … they agree that we can have a tariff on them,” Greer told CBC News correspondent Katie Simpson.
“If Canada wants to agree that we can have some level of higher tariff on them while they open up their markets to us on things like dairy and other things, then that’s a helpful conversation.”
It’s the clearest signal yet from the Trump administration that it’s aiming for a fundamental rewrite of the free-trade deals that have existed between the U.S., Canada and Mexico since NAFTA took effect in 1994.
You can have globalization in the rest of the market; we can import workers, we can import products for everything else but to be an actual nation you need self sufficiency in the aforementioned areas.
Take cement for instance, most people would say we need cement to build infrastructure but what if we can’t produce it? Well we need to import it. However that then means all of our critical infrastructure relies on the good will of that other nation. They can do anything they want and we just have to take it because of the reliance.
Another one would be oil, we need oil for our military/heating/infrastructure/plastics if Canada doesn’t have oil then to be a real nation we need to find an alternative. Now we do have oil which is great for the above…except we don’t refine it. Now we are a satellite of whatever nation can refine that oil, despite possessing oil in the ground we don’t actual have it.
Both of those aren’t listed in the “needs” because we can either find it domestically (Cement) or have alternatives (nuclear/solar/wind/natural gas paired with batteries)
The value of the dollar is meaningless if the government isn’t providing the necessities of life to the populace. If you rely on another nation for a necessity of life then you aren’t a separate nation. Markets come in for luxuries outside the necessities of life.