The United States and Canada: In Search of Partnership

Abstract

Recent meetings between President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau highlight the question regarding the cause of the periodic stress and virtual breakdown of good relations between the United States and Canada, perhaps in the world today the two most interdependent countries. Economic forces have compelled the leaders of the three NAFTA countries to eventually finalize a free trade agreement, for the simple reason that the alternative of finding new trading partners is undesirable and less feasible. If current U.S. policy runs counter to this assumption, it is because U.S. grand strategy has the additional task of confronting China over its unfair trading practices. Indeed, in the long run, Canada will be caught up in America’s slipstream as the two economic giants grapple with one another over access to markets, intellectual property rights, and manufacturing. Ultimately, even if peoples do not, governments sometimes periodically forget the importance of partnership. Every aspect of public and foreign policy from trade to the environment, and from security to immigration, captures the attention of Americans and Canadians toward each other. Perhaps the very intensity and scope of interdependence explains how the “noise” in Canada–U.S. relations sometimes obliterates the “signal”.