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The United States, Canada, And The World Economy

Edited by Charles F. Doran and Alvin Paul Drischler
Reviewed by By William Diebold, Jr.
Winter 1991/92
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Edited by Charles F. Doran and Alvin Paul Drischler
The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute
1991
100 pp.
$14.95

Although the four essays by Americans and Canadians are short, they make some good points about the politics of the distribution of gains and losses under the free trade area agreement: the protectionist bias of arrangements for common trade policies toward the rest of the world; the discrepancy between the attention to services and the results; how freer trade in goods may also create internal pressures in Canada for further liberalization of services; and the range of domestic issues that will arise if any further steps are taken concerning investments.

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Essay, Jan 1965
Good Neighborhood
Lester B. Pearson

A Distinguished former United States Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Livingston Merchant, was recently quoted as saying, "Canada is more important to the United States than any other single country." This will startle the average American who thinks of Canada-when he thinks of it at all-as a land of snow, wheat, "Northern Dancer," tourist camps and discontented people who speak French.

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Essay, Jul 1967
Malthus, Marx and the North American Breadbasket
Orville L. Freeman

North America's dramatic emergence over the past generation as the world's principal supplier of food can be illustrated with a half dozen numbers. During the late 1930s, three of the world's seven major geographic regions supplied virtually all of the grain moving into the world market. Latin America, with exports of nine million metric tons yearly, was the leading food exporter, and grain exports were an important source of foreign exchange earnings. North America and Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union) were each exporting five million tons yearly. Most of the grain exported from these three regions, principally wheat and corn, went to Western Europe.

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Essay, Oct 1967
Growing Independence in Canadian-American Relations
John W. Holmes

The most significant fact about the Canadian-American relationship may prove to be that the United States is growing less dependent on its allies- including Canada. That Canada is growing more dependent on the United States is a more frequent assumption, especially of Canadians, who make a political sport of accusing each other of abetting this deplorable trend. The United States cares less and less what Canada does because it has a declining interest in our territory for its defenses in a missile age. This trend is unlikely to strengthen our bargaining power in Washington, but it leaves us freer to follow our own course. American independence of Canada encourages Canadian independence of the United States. It tempts us to "neutralism"-if "neutralism" means much in a world shifting from alignment to duopoly, when the "neutralist" heretic General de Gaulle could be outflanked by President Johnson on the road to Moscow.

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