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“This is pure good news,” the prime minister said while celebrating the end of U.S. tariffs on our exports of steel and aluminum last Friday. We returned the favour by lifting our retaliatory tariffs Monday, even though it was a holiday. The end of the tariffs is good news? Yes. “Pure” good news? Hardly.

Free trade is good in and of itself but from this country’s perspective, NAFTA always had as much to do with investment as trade. If you could provide reasonable certainty the Canada-U.S. border would remain open to relatively free bilateral flows of goods and services, you could more easily persuade companies both domestic and foreign that investing in Canada was a low-risk, high-return proposition. They could take advantage of whatever benefits our labour force, capital stock, expertise or geography offered and yet also have access to the entire North American market.

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By contrast, if the border could be closed capriciously, it was obvious which side of it most businesses would prefer to be on. Produce in the U.S. and, yes, border problems might suddenly lose you the Canadian market, which might account for 10 per cent of your orders. But produce in Canada and border troubles put at risk the 90 per cent of your sales that are American. It’s not a choice requiring deep thought.