It is real pleasure for me to be with you here in Washington today. Spring seems to have taken an extended leave of absence from Ottawa, so it is good to feel the warm Washington air.

It is also good to be in the capital city of the nation that has done so much and worked so hard to establish the type of free and open trading system that is increasingly becoming dominant in the world today.

I welcome the opportunity to address this distinguished audience because you have played a leading role in promoting the idea of free trade in this hemisphere -- an idea that Canada welcomes and is working to see realized.

The Council of the Americas has played a vital role in helping businesses identify the opportunities presented by the Free Trade Area of the Americas [FTAA] and in broadening the perspective and deepening the understanding of governments as we deal with a myriad of challenging issues.

Today's meeting helps to maintain the momentum toward our common goal.

Canadian interest in this region is neither recent nor accidental. Ours is a position established by our membership in the Organization of American States [OAS] and the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] and by our close relationship with the Caribbean Commonwealth. It is a position strengthened by our commitment to the goals of the Miami Summit and cemented by the strong ties forged in the region, at the highest levels, by the Prime Minister's visit to Latin America and the Caribbean within the past year.

Canadian investment in the Americas is growing dramatically; our exports have nearly doubled in just four years. We now export more to Latin America than we do to France and Germany combined.

But we know that we are still only scratching the surface -- that the potential is tremendous, and we intend to do whatever we can to develop that potential because it creates jobs and growth.

As we work with our hemispheric partners toward making the FTAA a reality, there are a number of challenges that confront us. I would like to touch on some of those today.

As in any journey, the first steps are often the most difficult. Canada's experience with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement [FTA], and later the NAFTA, attests to that. Before we entered into a free trade agreement with the United States in 1988, significant debate took place. Afterward, significant adjustment costs were incurred.

But since that time, Canadian exports to the United States have soared. Canadian companies have become more competitive, and jobs are being created on both sides of the border. We are each other's major trading partner. A billion dollars of trade crosses the border every day.

There has been another important result: having made the adjustment to more open trade with the United States, Canada now has more incentive -- and more freedom -- to pursue free trade with other partners.

This only makes sense. Going the next logical step and opening our economy to other trading partners involves few additional costs, but places us in a better position to maximize returns on the adjustments we have already made.

My point is simply this: the free trade agreement with the United States and, later, also with Mexico did not just open our trade with those countries; it also provided the incentive to liberalize beyond the continent -- to open ourselves to trade with the world.

These lessons are worth remembering today.

It is always easier to choose a destination than to plot a course. It is relatively easy to set the goal of having free trade in the Americas by 2005; it is far more difficult to decide what obligations and rights we are prepared to commit to in a final agreement.

Difficult questions must be asked. Questions such as: are certain key players still committed to the goal of free trade by 2005? If so, how should the FTAA be structured? What do we want to see in the agreement?

I have not come with answers to all of these questions today, but I would like to raise some concerns that I think need to be addressed.

One such concern is the role the United States must play in the future direction of not only the FTAA process but liberalized trade more generally.

After playing a central role in launching the FTAA initiative two years ago, the United States may be in danger of losing much of its leverage because of its failure to obtain fast-track authority for Chilean accession to the NAFTA.

And to this concern must be added the disturbing anti-free-trade rhetoric that has reverberated throughout parts of the U.S. presidential campaign. Nor can we take comfort in initiatives like the Helms-Burton Bill, which we and most other countries feel violates international law, and which seeks to isolate rather than integrate segments of our hemisphere. These and other events raise the very real question of whether the United States will be able to play the leadership role it must in the days and months that lie ahead.

This should be of concern to all of us. The dangers of losing direction at this critical juncture can hardly be overstated. It could mean losing an historic opportunity to build bridges to the newly emerging economies of Latin America. It could risk undermining -- or even reversing -- the current region-wide trend toward liberalization.

Worse still, it could lead to the emergence of internal-looking protective trading blocs -- a development that not only would weaken the cause of free trade in the region, but could also adversely affect relations between North and South America.

As we launch ourselves into the FTAA, let us re-dedicate ourselves to a rules-based system of trade.

It is appropriate that this message should be brought to this body and to this city, because Americans have always believed in fair trade. Indeed, trade has long been a cornerstone of American foreign policy. "The removal of economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among the nations" was the third of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points.

At the heart of that commitment to liberalized trade was the boundless American belief in the genius of the free market system -- a system that saw the government's role as acting where it must and standing aside where it should.

Americans understood that might did not always equal right, that rules were important, and that even the wildest frontier town needed a sheriff.

For many years, the United States has worn that sheriff's star. The United States was both the architect and the protector of the world's trading system -- a system that has served Americans and others well.

That same commitment to a rules-based system was brought to their international trade policy. Abroad, as at home, Americans believed that rules lead to stability and predictability; that chaos and disorder are not beneficial to anyone's long-term interests.

More fundamentally, Americans knew that rules prevent a "law of the jungle" in international trade and mitigate against the use of raw power in resolving disputes.

But it is always easy to believe in free trade when one holds a comparative advantage.

The challenge facing all of us today is to honour our commitments when we do not hold all the cards or establish all the rules.

It would be ironic if the United States or Canada or any other country that had helped to establish the rules-based system of trade now in ascendency should begin to act in ways that would threaten to unravel the very tapestry we have sewn.

We must not become our own worst enemies.

If we are sincere in our support for the rule of law; if we honestly believe in strengthening and expanding the benefits of freer trade; if we are committed to a rules-based system, not only when it is convenient but especially when it is not, then we must lead and lead decisively.

As the world moves toward a rules-based trading system, now is surely not the time to retreat into the old ways of the old days. Now is surely not the time to slacken our vigilance or abandon our commitment to those rules.

Managed trade deals, numerical targets or quotas, results-oriented trade policies -- these and myriad other terms have become euphemisms for what is really a turning away from the ideals of free trade.

They have become code words for "power should prevail," and they intimate that governments, rather than markets, should determine market outcomes. They are words and they are practices that we must resist.

In his inaugural address, President Kennedy reminded Americans that if the United States could not protect the many who are poor, it could not save the few who are rich. Today, in the world of trade, if we do not protect the many countries who are weak, we will not be able to save the few who are powerful.

Nor can we assume that the rich and the strong will always remain so, or that the poor and the weak will always remain in their condition.

Who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, would have predicted the existence of the European Union, a self-sufficient and self-confident economic power that now boasts a gross domestic product [GDP] larger than that of the United States? Who would have seen Japan standing with the second-largest economy of any single nation in the world?

And now China and India, long sleeping giants, are beginning to stir.

The harsh reality is that the world is changing rapidly, fundamentally, and profoundly. No nation, whatever its present strength or power, can confidently predict perpetual preeminence.

The day may come when the very rules that are now in jeopardy will be the same rules we will seek to invoke.

And let no one doubt that when we act in ways inconsistent with a rules-based approach to trade, we weaken the principles of free trade -- principles by which, for example, we have agreed to govern ourselves under the NAFTA.

Canada has to accept some responsibility as well. The recent softwood agreement between the United States and Canada was a short-term, expedient way of handling the problem. But we should not allow such a solution to become a precedent.

Quite simply, by indulging in managed trade arrangements, we introduce termites into the edifice of free trade we have constructed -- weakening its foundations and threatening its future.

Let's be frank: protectionism breeds protectionism: as long as one major market insulates itself from the rigours of international competition. Others will follow.

And we must candidly admit that the more safeguards governments create, the more seriously eroded is the credibility of organizations such as the World Trade Organization [WTO].

Such great institutions of fair and freer trade like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT] were built on the proposition that a liberalized system based on rules would lead to prosperity and growth, while contributing to peace and security. That proposition is as valid today as it was at their creation, 50 years ago.

In closing, let me just remind you that arrangements like the FTAA or the WTO or the NAFTA flourish only through the collective will of their members. They are not entities so much as ideals, and they survive only as long as those ideals are upheld, supported and nourished.

To abandon those ideals now would be wrong. It would be wrong for practical reasons: they have served us well and still do. It would be wrong for strategic reasons: no one is big enough to stand alone, and even if one were, one's interests would be undermined by weakening the rules that sustain them.

So the choice before us is clear: we can slip backwards into an ad hoc approach of quick fixes or we can decide to move the agenda forward.

I believe that we are strong enough and committed enough to choose the latter.

But that choice calls for strong leadership.

In 1962, in introducing the Trade Expansion Act, President Kennedy reminded Americans -- and the world -- that "in the life of every nation ... there comes a time when [it] stands at the crossroads; when it can either shrink from the future and retire into its shell, or move ahead, asserting its will and its faith in an uncertain sea."

Today, we again face an "uncertain sea." Under such conditions, it is understandable that we would sometimes seek refuge in ports of convenience, to strike deals and reach arrangements that see us through a particular storm.

But progress was never made by adhering only to the certain and the safe. Today, more than ever, we must have the courage to sail those "uncertain seas."

And I refuse to believe that the United States would now turn its back on a course that has brought it so many benefits in the past and that holds such promise for the future.

Let me leave you with a clear statement of the Canadian position. We are committed to free trade: we were there at the beginning of the WTO and we are committed to making it work.

Now our challenge is to create the FTAA. This represents an historic opportunity for this hemisphere -- one that goes far beyond economics.

I am fully committed to this project. Canada is fully committed. And I am confident that the United States will recognize where its true interests lie and will assert its leadership as it has done so successfully in the past.

So let us go forward, knowing that united there is little we cannot do and that great as our past progress has been, our greatest achievements are yet to come.

Thank you.

2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002 - 2001 - 2000 - 1999 - 1998 - 1997 - 1996

Print friendly version - Printing Tips



Last Updated: 2006-10-30	Top of Page	Important Notices