Team Canada & CUSMA

In 2017, the Trump administration notified NAFTA parties of its intent to renegotiate North America’s continental trade agreement. This launched a multi-year, fast-tracked trade negotiation for one of the most integrated trade areas in the world. The resultant agreement, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), adds new provisions  to the NAFTA framework while maintaining others.

Continental trade is meaningful for each party involved, but it takes a special meaning to Canada. Canada is highly reliant on the North American market and (stable) access to the United States is intimately tied to its economic prosperity. Yet, continental trade is more than tariffs and non-discrimination for Canada. Continental agreements are watershed moments for Canadian policy-making. Continental trade constrains governments while deepening path dependency. As a middle-power, codified rules are attractive precisely because they constrain state powers. But this sacrifice of authority is costly, particularly as trade treaties introduce avenues for new (foreign) private actors to integrate, centralize and influence markets and policy.

Historically, continental trade has been controversial in Canada. The original FTA was hotly contested. While public opinion today largely favours trade treaties, particularly in Canada, public objections to trade remains. Populist rejections of deep globalization join a chorus of left-leaning critiques of trade-as-is. Together, these voices have lamented the mission creep of a trade order with debatable results for the working class. Their calls for re- and de-globalization are amplified by a series of economic, racial, and health crises. Though this – at times tense – coalition does not always find representation among political elites, the CUSMA negotiations bucked this trend. The Trump administration was notionally willing to play to these forces.

All this to say, the CUSMA was a critical moment for continental North America. Framing North America as a continental regime, this project interrogates the pretext and context of NAFTA’s renegotiation. In particular, it seeks to understand how Canada mobilized to (re)shape the continental regime. Faced with a desire to render globalization inclusive while preserving rules-based institutions, ‘Team Canada” had a lot on its plate.