A TRADE PACT THAT REALLY WORKS

It was only the second meeting the Canada-United States Trade Commission created by the free trade agreement between the two giant trading partners, but already there was action to accelerate implementation of the historic agreement. Clearly, the pact is working.

John C. Crosbie, Canada’s minister of international trade, and Carla Hills, U.S Trade representative, met at the end of November in Ottawa in their capacities as commission members, and quickly reached agreement on speeding elimination of tariffs on more than 400 items with a bilateral trade value of $6 million. Parliamentary and congressional approval are now required, but that does not seem to pose any problem. The cuts were requested by the industries themselves and no opposition has been voiced. Without this action, some of the tariffs could have remained in force for the full 10-year transition period provided for implementation of the agreement.

Crosbie and Hills also were able to express satisfaction with the way the free-trade agreement, implemented just 11 months earlier, is working. They acknowledged that the agreement had not resolved all of the bilateral disagreements that inevitably occur, but the atmosphere of negotiations held promise of working out solutions more readily than in some of the trade confrontations that preceded the global agreement.

The two nations, with about $200 billion in trade between them, represent the largest bilateral trade in the world.