Disagreements over the Trans-Pacific Partnership have once again delayed the production of a comprehensive trade agreement between Canada and a number of pacific and Asian markets. The Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP, is a proposed free trade agreement among a number of Pacific Rim nations that has been the subject to heated debate here in Canada, especially between opposing political parties. Recently concerns have arisen specifically within Canada’s dairy and agricultural markets, whose members are concerned that the removal of trade barriers are going to open up the Canadian market to foreign competitors. This concern has arisen since New Zealand announced that it wished to expand its market in the United States to which American farmers replied that only if the Mexican and Canadian markets opened up would they allow Kiwi dairy to compete in their market.
This dispute is indicative of (as well as the product of) what I see as greater socio-economic issues in Canada, the purveying sentiment of economic protectionism and the remarkable power of special interest groups like the agricultural lobby. To the consumer (the majority of Canadians) the Trans-Pacific Partnership and free trade in general, would introduce more competitors into the agricultural market resulting in much lower food prices. However, the idea of protectionism holds that certain trade barriers need to be in place in order to protect domestic industries, in this case dairy farmers from more competitive Kiwi or American industries. This idea gets applied tangibly when Canadian farmers come together to lobby the government for more protective policies like trade barriers or special treatment. This considerable lobby and voting bloc cannot be ignored by political parties and tends to be diametrically opposed to free trade agreements like the TPP.
This pressure to appease special interest groups tends to make negotiations on free trade agreements particularly divisive. The NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has opposed the TPP outright because it “does not protect [our] manufacturing sector…” while even the conservative candidate Stephen Harper has struggled with negotiations. The TPP is certainly a very complex and multifaceted deal, that needs careful consideration from every nation that participates, but what seems to be at the core of the concerns with the negotiation is the immense political-power domestic businesses have to leverage their governments to reduce competition in their fields.
Article:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trans-pacific-partnership-near-deal-1.3256151
Images:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Leaders_of_TPP_member_states.jpg
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/images/news_bprotectionism-2.jpg
