The election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States raises a litany of questions about the future of US trade policy. Canada, along with Mexico, is particularly heavily exposed to trade with the United States and there is considerable speculation about how Canada should react if...

Economic history since the industrial revolution has not been a story of gradual evolution. Rather it has been punctuated by disruptive changes that ushered in new episodes. The current episode is being ushered out; what will replace it? The sources of the disruption can be traced by the various...

The possibility of a Canada-China Free Trade Agreement has been under discussion for some time. China has reportedly offered to negotiate an FTA with Canada, although this has not been officially confirmed by the Canadian Government. A tentative step towards a negotiation was taken in the 2012...

China continues to grow in strategic importance for Canada and the world as a trade and innovation partner. China features untapped growth potential from internal integration and is underwriting East Asian regional integration through initiatives such as the One Belt – One Road trade corridor,...

The policy measures taken to address the coronavirus pandemic have plunged the global economy into the greatest recession since the 1930s. These measures were motivated in the first instance by the experience in regions where the virus was uncontained and resulted in overwhelmed medical systems...

This note comments on the economic impacts of the CUSMA, the implications for business certainty, and its readiness for the knowledge based and data-driven economy. Relative to the status quo, the CUSMA impacts negatively on economic efficiency and welfare, and leaves unaddressed the major new...

The US-China trade deal has received at best a lukewarm initial reception from the trade policy community. China is to buy US$ 200 billion of US goods and services per annum in 2020 and 2021 above 2017 baseline levels; the US lowers tariffs by 7.5% on imports from China of US$120 billion of...

This study assesses the potential gains from unilateral trade liberalization for the UK, against the background of a hard Brexit in which a hard border and tariff wall is erected between the UK and the European Union. Unilateral trade liberalization would allow the UK to expeditiously offset at...

The dawn of a new economic era based on a new essential capital asset and new general purpose technologies provides a unifying framework to make sense of the rupture of the rules-based trading system, the flaring conflicts within states, and the eruption of a trade and technology war between...

In these notes, I comment on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, on its economics, and on its importance for the rules-based multilateral trading system at a time of disruptive change