Sunday, June 07, 2009

Canada's Mayors Respond to "Buy American" Plan

Canada's mayors have announced their own plan for retailiation against U.S. "buy-American" mandates.

From CBC's Canadian mayors pass anti-'Buy American' resolution:

In response to the 'Buy American' provisions of the U.S. stimulus package, Canada's mayors narrowly passed a resolution Saturday that could potentially block U.S. companies from bidding on city contracts.

The resolution was passed at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Whistler, B.C., by a vote of 189-175.

The resolution says the federation should support cities that adopt policies that allow them to buy only from companies whose home countries do not impose trade restrictions against Canadian goods.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A couple of questions here - the first is the most basic. Is directed trade preferences the way to solve a problem of directed trade preferences? Immediately it sounds like a 'oh yeah - well two can play that game, mister." a battle of testosterone.

The other question is about the legality of this under NAFTA. I did (do) not like NAFTA, actively worked against it at the time of its' inception. But Mr. Mulroney made it the law of the land and to not abide by it invites retaliation. Are there no avenues for surcease within the agreement?

croghan27

Real Estate in Toronto said...

Ahhh, I hate protectionism, don't people realize it's not such a great idea? Maybe everyone should just start producing their own goods and kill the world trade for good. Such a stupid idea, all the economies are dependent on trading and buying goods from other countries. With no world trade, a majority of countries around the world will collapse. I guess Mr. Obama just doesn't care about that...

Take care, Julie