Can You Be Pro-Free Trade and Increase 1,000+ Tariffs? Sure, Just Ask Canada

Nailing down a nation’s trade policy can be tricky. 

 Just look at the trade policies of Canada under conservative Prime Minster Stephen Harper. 

Sure, Canada’s Conservative government is pushing regional and bi-national trade pacts.

But, in Canada’s latest federal budget, there are 1,253 tariffs increases. The fiscal impact: adding $300 million to Canada’s ~$5 billion in existing tariff revenues.

Read all of Stephen Gordon’s excoriation in Maclean’s here. (Note: Terence Corcoran’s Financial Post article earlier this week makes the same point). Below are some highlights:

...Yes, there were those 37 tariff reductions, but there was also the measure to ‘modernize’ Canada’s General Preferential Tariff (GPT) regime by ‘graduating’ 72 countries from the GPT; imports from these countries will now face higher tariffs. Mike Moffatt estimates those 37 tariff reductions will be accompanied by 1,290 tariff increases. By my count, there are 84 GPT countries, but I still haven’t been able to track down a list of which countries will be removed from the GPT (Update: Mike Moffatt informs me 12 of these already have separate agreements with Canada, so that brings it to 72). The budget does name some examples: Korea, China (second-most important source of imports to Canada), Korea (seventh) and Brazil (twelfth), and the GPT countries as a group account for more than 20 per cent of imports. This measure is expected to generate some $300 million in extra revenues, on top of about $5 billion in existing excise duty revenues.

So instead of a unilateral reduction in tariffs, the government is planning a unilateral increase. This is not how a pro-trade government behaves. (Imports from the countries with which the Conservatives have negotiated free trade agreements are dwarfed by those from China alone.)


…

I still can’t get my head around the truly bizarre notion that low tariffs are a subsidy to other countries on the part of Canadian taxpayers, especially since raising tariffs requires Canadian taxpayers to cough up an additional $300 million a year to the government. But if we needed any more evidence that this government is not serious about free trade, here it is. Instead of viewing cheaper imports as a way of increasing consumers’ purchasing power, the Conservative government views them as a problem to be solved.

After seven years in power, the Conservative trade legacy consists of higher tariffs and more obstacles to foreign investment. The Council of Canadians must be thrilled.