Former trade minister urges Canada to seek ‘grand bargain’ with Trump, not narrow CUSMA deal

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With Canada and the United States engaged in tense trade negotiations over tariffs, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s team signalling that it wants annual reviews rather than a renewal of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), National Post reached out to former International Trade Minister Ed Fast for his view on the current state of Canada-U.S. trade relations and the ongoing talks.

Fast served under Prime Minister Stephen Harper from 2011 to 2015, helping negotiate major agreements, including CETA, the Canada-South Korea deal, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He argues that Canada should seek a broader continental bargain — encompassing trade, critical-mineral supply, energy and defence — rather than negotiate CUSMA in isolation.

Ed Fast: The reason Canada should be broadening out the negotiation with the United States is because of the asymmetry in our economic partnership. The U.S. economy is 10 times the size of our own, and any tariff war we get into is going to hurt us more than it hurts the United States.

Within the narrow confines of CUSMA, Canada has very few, if any, bargaining chips. Where our strengths and assets lie is within the broader continental relationship. If we broaden it out to provide assurance of supply and broaden it out to address the continental national-security implications of our relationship, suddenly, Canada has assets at the table that we can use to push back against some of the more unreasonable requests coming from the Americans.

If we make a compelling case that there are many areas, especially on assured supply — things like nuclear uranium, critical minerals, energy, oil and gas, electricity grids, potash and food security — there is a compelling case to be made that, notwithstanding Donald Trump’s protestations to the contrary, the United States would benefit significantly from broadening out a trade negotiation to include the totality of our relationship, including assured supply of commodities that matter most to the American economy.

Eighty per cent of American potash imports come from Canada.

We would need a legally binding and enforceable agreement that tariff-free trade among the CUSMA partners will continue. That is the trade-off.

Many of the commodities that Canada could provide assurance for are covered under CUSMA. The challenge is that there are no provisions within CUSMA that provide assurance of supply. When we’re talking about issues like energy, food security, potash, and critical minerals, the actual trade in those commodities is addressed within CUSMA; the assured supply that the United States needs is not. We have an opportunity to broaden out the discussion to perhaps discuss assured supply.