Should B.C. look for other trade markets in light of threatened tariffs on Canadian goods by the U.S.?

Poll: B.C. trading partners

Photo: Colin Dacre

B.C. Premier David Eby is promising to seek new export opportunities for the province after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose a 25-per-cent tariff on all Mexican and Canadian goods.

British Columbia exports billions of dollars’ worth of commodities and products – coal and lumber, plastics and machinery – every month, with just over half bound for the United States.

It could be worse. Canada as a whole sends three-quarters of its exports to the U.S. B.C. has less exposure to that single market thanks to a long-running policy, embraced by political parties of every stripe, of maintaining a diversified trade portfolio.

“We’re going to continue to do our work to expand those trading opportunities,” Mr. Eby told reporters Wednesday.

In the 1980s, B.C.’s political leaders set their economic sights on Asia, opening trade offices in Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan with the intent of reducing the province’s dependence on its dominant customer to the south. The province has bankrolled countless trade missions and now maintains 19 overseas trade offices.

Yet the U.S. has consistently remained its most important trading partner over the past four decades.

At best, the diversification strategy has dampened the siren call of the behemoth at its doorstep.

“Canada is so privileged to be next door to this giant economic engine of the United States,” noted former B.C. premier Glen Clark in an interview. “We understand the laws there, we understand the language, we understand the people, and it’s very close, so it’s a natural.”

But too much dependence on a single market – no matter how big, no matter how easy – comes with risk.

Mr. Trump’s tariff threat should be a catalyst for a fresh commitment to cultivate new markets, said Mr. Clark, who led 13 trade missions to China alone during his term as premier, from 1996 to 1999. “Reviving that trade policy, only with different focus on parts of the world, makes a lot of sense as we move forward in this kind of dangerous time.”

In 1987, Mike Harcourt, then the NDP opposition leader, stood up in the legislature and endorsed the Social Credit government’s early trade missions. Even as some Socred backbenchers dismissed the trips as “boondoggles,” Mr. Harcourt pressed for a more aggressive strategy. “We support those initiatives, but we’re not bold enough,” he said, insisting that the province needed to establish outposts in China and India.

At the time, the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute was demonstrating the ability of the U.S. to cripple the province’s forest sector. That conflict continues today – a textbook example for Canada of how U.S. protectionism can supersede good trade relations.

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