The distinction of introducing the first anti-dumping measure falls to Canada. At a time when tariffs were not bound, what made the duty special was that it could be levied administratively, rather than being enacted. In historical context, anti-dumping first made its appearance in an era that...

The pervasive divergence between private and social returns due to externalities have historically led countries to underwrite industrial risk. The approaches to this have varied widely across countries as have the articulated rationales and the results have been mixed, with some successes but...

With the recent completion of a second Joint Study regarding a Canada-Japan Free Trade Agreement, and Canada's entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, which may eventually include Japan, the implications of trade liberalization with Asian economies gains renewed interest, in...

As low cost oil reserves are depleted over the coming decades and replaced by higher-cost sources and other forms of energy that are less easily used for transportation, the cost of shipping goods internationally will increase, perhaps very substantially. This will have a pervasive impact on the...

Higher energy prices, an inevitable consequence of the depletion of the least cost sources of fossil fuels, will not end globalization, but it will alter it. Trade declines with increased distance in part because of transportation costs, the more so the heavier the goods and the greater the fuel...

Canada and Australia are highly similar economies in terms of size, wealth, governance structures, most observable socioeconomic characteristics, and resource endowments. Reflecting this, their patterns of revealed comparative advantage in international trade are highly similar. At the same...

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements in recent years has reenergized a long-standing debate over their benefits and costs. This paper argues that a balanced view is in order. The trade creating effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) are likely to fall off sharply with increasing...

The way in which public policy is developed is highly particular to the context - the political and institutional framework of the country, the subject area, and the key issues and events of the day. Canadian trade policy formation is no exception, being very much shaped by its context - the...

After the dramas of 2010-2012, when the erstwhile global recovery reeled from pillar to post, buffeted by one momentum-draining shock after another, 2013 was greeted with relief and a bit of cautious optimism. However, those hopes faced one cold shower – and forecast downgrade – after...

For apparently irreconcilable domestic political reasons, the United States is an outlier amongst economically advanced countries as the only one that does not have a value added tax (VAT), which is the conventional and WTO-sanctioned approach to applying an economically efficient and...