In this paper, we examine the proposition that Canada’s economic relationship with Asia has languished, or at least has not lived up to its potential. To do so, we draw on the conventional gravity model of international trade and investment and take advantage of the similarity between Canada...

As the global community moves to forge a new climate change agreement, complex questions arise concerning the implications for the international trading system. This was the topic of a meeting in Toronto on October 26 and 27, 2009 that brought together experts from the two communities – trade...

The BRICs economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) created a buzz with a strong run in the global expansion of the 2000s and the help of a little pumping up of their tires by Goldman Sachs analysts who projected these economies would surpass the advanced countries within a few decades. The...

The year 2022 has been dubbed “the year AI got smart”. The year 2023 meanwhile is witnessing an explosion of concern about the governance of AI as large language models bring the science fiction future into everyday reality. Developments include a call from Geoffrey Hinton, one of the...

The Trump Administration made a fundamental break with longstanding US trade policy. This break might be explained as expressing Trump’s affinity for traditional American isolationism. In some respects, it might also be described as an expression of strongly held personal views of Trump’s...

Starting with the Trump Administration and continuing under the Biden Administration America’s trade policy can be characterized as one of “destructive isolationism”. It has undermined the multilateral trade system whose creation it had led; pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific...

The Silicon Valley Bank failure has drawn comparisons to the Bear Stearns collapse in March 2008, which was followed 6 months later by the Lehman Brothers collapse, which then unleashed the Great Financial Crisis. In this light and against the background of the U.S.’s unique proclivity for...

As if America needed another body blow to its global standing. Symbolically, and possibly in practical reality, the failure of the financial institution of choice for the crown jewel of the US innovation system, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), could not have come at a worse moment in US history: an...

This brief examines the framing of the proposed reforms to the Investment Canada Act in the context of the digital transformation and the evolving nature of the contemporary innovation-intensive economy. It argues that the Act must go beyond considerations of the size of firms in triggering...

Today, globalization is under attack with calls for reshoring, nearshoring and friendshoring (aka allyshoring) as well as related calls for decoupling and derisking. The paper distinguishes the various "shorings" conceptually, clarifies their underlying economics in relation to the criteria of...