Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement Research Articles

China and the “culture and trade” debate: a holistic approach

ABSTRACT Over the past century, the ‘culture and trade’ debate has constantly evolved, particularly in the wake of rapid and still accelerating technological and scientific advances. These changes, manifest in an increasing convergence of many new technologies and industries, meant that the strict separation of culture from trade by means, for instance, of general or special exceptions in international trade agreements, such as the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), can no longer be sustained. It means that in light of the emergence of oxymoronic concepts like ‘the cultural and creative industries’, the debate can no longer be framed along binary modes of thinking that oppose the liberalization of international trade and the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultures. Instead a more holistic approach seems to be needed, which appears to coincide with the approach taken by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which joined the WTO in 2001. The present paper examines the holistic approach by the PRC, which seeks to combine rather than separate culture and trade in its domestic, regional and global law and policymaking.

A New Scale of Activism: Canadian Unions and the North American Free Trade Agreement, 1992–1999

This article focuses on the campaigns of national Canadian unions and other labour organizations against the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta). Changes in the strategic orientation of these unions and labour organizations are traced from the period following the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement and contextualized in post–Cold War trends in North American labour more broadly. These developments are viewed through the lens of scale shift and political process models of social movement theory. Though some transnational links were developed before nafta was implemented, these linkages were expanded following the agreement's passage. Additionally, these organizations took advantage of political opportunities originating from the new structures of nafta itself. Canadian unions and associated anti-free-trade coalitions worked alongside their regional counterparts to construct alternatives to neoliberalism and build consensus. Following the failure of domestic political opportunities to prevent the passage of nafta, some Canadian unions and labour organizations used emerging international political opportunities to deepen collaborations with their counterparts in countries experiencing trade liberalization.

Integration Interrupted : The Impact of September 11, 2001

The economies of Canada and the United States, closely linked for many years, began a formal process of tighter integration with the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (1989) and North American Free Trade Agreement (1994). Due to the ease of border crossing, American and Canadian consumers took advantage of exchange rate variations to engage in cross-border shopping, implying a movement toward unified markets in the border regions. This process of integration was interrupted by tighter border controls after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In this paper, we investigate the disruption of normal patterns of day tripping across the US-Canadian border. Using seasonally adjusted monthly data for the period 1994~2011, we show a robust relationship between the exchange rate and the flow of day trippers in each direction, implying cross-border shopping to be a major motive for day trippers. Using dummy variables to represent the security measures enacted in September 2001, and the stricter documentation required after January 2008, we show that both sets of measures significantly reduced cross-border trips and thickened the border.

CEO duality and firm performance: Evidence from an exogenous shock to the competitive environment

Regulators and governance activists are pressuring firms to abolish CEO duality (the Chief Executive Officer is also the Chairman of the Board). However, the literature provides mixed evidence on the relation between CEO duality and firm performance. Using the exogenous shock of the 1989 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement, we find that duality firms outperform non-duality firms by 3–4% when their competitive environments change. Further, the performance difference is larger for firms with higher information costs and better corporate governance. Our results underscore the benefits of CEO duality in saving information costs and making speedy decisions.

Heterogeneous firm-level responses to trade liberalization: A test using stock price reactions

This paper presents novel empirical evidence on key predictions of heterogeneous firm models by examining stock market reactions to the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 (CUSFTA). I derive testable predictions for a class of models based on Melitz (2003). Using the uncertainty surrounding CUSFTA's ratification, I show that the pattern of abnormal returns of Canadian manufacturing firms was strongly consistent with predictions related to export (U.S.) tariff reductions, but less so with predictions related to import (Canadian) tariff reductions. Lower Canadian tariffs did have an effect through the implied reduction in intermediate input tariffs, however.

CEO Duality, Competition, and Firm Performance

Regulators and governance activists are pressuring firms to abolish CEO duality (the Chief Executive Officer is also the Chairman of the Board). However, the literature provides mixed evidence on the relation between CEO duality and firm performance. Using the exogenous shock of the 1989 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, we find that duality firms outperform non-duality firms by 3-4% when their competitive environments change. Further, the performance difference is larger for firms with higher information costs and better corporate governance. Our results underscore the benefits of CEO duality in saving information costs and making speedy decisions.

Responses to Trade Liberalization: Changes in Product Diversification in Foreign- and Domestic-Controlled Plants

This paper studies the impact that a small country joining a regional trade agreement, but particularly a small country, might be expected to gain from the exploitation of scale economies. It makes use of the experience of Canada when it entered into the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in the early 1990s.It finds that there was a general increase in the pace of plant commodity specialization around the time of implementation of the Free Trade Agreement. At the time of the treaty, plant diversity was found to be higher in larger plants and in industries with assets that are associated with scope economies. Diversity was also higher in industries that had higher rates of tariff protection.Over the 1980s and 1990s, plant diversity decreased with reductions in both U.S. and Canadian tariffs. And the decline was greater during the post FTA era than before, thereby suggesting that this treaty had an impact above and beyond that just engendered by the tariff reductions that were associated with it. The study also found that foreign-controlled plants tended to adjust more over the entire period.

Trade Liberalization and Productivity Dynamics: Evidence from Canada

This paper investigates the productivity effects of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Canadian manufacturing. It finds that Canadian tariff cuts increased exit rates among moderately productive non-exporting plants. This led to the reallocation of market share toward highly productive plants, which helps explain why aggregate productivity gains were observed when Canadian tariffs were reduced. The paper also finds that all of the within-plant productivity gains resulting from the U.S. tariff cuts involved exporters and, especially, new entrants into the export market. It demonstrates that any lack of output responses and labour-shedding as a consequence of the FTA were experienced by Canadian plants who were non-exporters, while exporters captured the gains from the FTA.

Trade liberalization and industrial restructuring through mergers and acquisitions

This paper analyzes mergers and acquisitions (M&As) as a channel of industrial restructuring after trade liberalization. Using the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989 as a source of exogenous variation in trade barriers, I show that trade liberalization increased domestic Canadian M&A activity (Canadian firms buying other Canadian firms) by over 70%. There is no robust link between tariff reductions and either domestic U.S. or cross-border M&As. I also provide evidence that domestic M&As transferred resources from less to more productive firms and that the magnitude of the overall transfer was quantitatively important.

NAFTA and its Discontents

While the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA) was a major event in Mexico, it was of only sectoral interest in the US and of interest primarily to the free trade community in Canada. The major event in Canada was, of course, the Canada-United States free trade agreement (FTA) five years earlier. The combined effects of the Canada-U S FTA and several rounds of GATT trade liberalization had created a situation in which the impacts of NAFTA were expected to be rather small: tariff barriers had already been lowered (average Mexican tariffs were 13 percent and US and Canadian tariffs were about six percent); many of Mexico's quantitative restrictions had been removed; and trade diversion from other developing countries was thought to limit the impacts of low wage imports into Canada and the US from Mexico. The final estimates of the probable effects of the more significant FTA (1989) were an increase in Canadian gross domestic product in the range of only two-three percent, and one-tenth of that for the US. Nonetheless, there was considerable opposition to NAFTA in each of the three countries. Furthermore, being a trade liberalization initiative, NAFTA was treated by many as just another aspect of globalization and was subjected to the same criticism that all such initiatives receive. It is only the opposition that is related specifically to intra-North American consequences that will be considered in this paper; once this has been discussed we will evaluate those concerns in light of the actual consequences of this important trinational exercise in trade liberalization. The criticisms of NAFTA ranged from the most general and contextual to the narrowly economic to issues of sovereignty.' Each set of criticisms will be examined in this order.One widely held, perhaps journalistic, general opinion was that the US was an economy in decline. The combination of the OPEC oil price increases of the 19703, the lingering consequences of the Vietnam War, the burdens of arming itself against the threat posed by the Soviet Union, and the fiscal excesses of the Reagan administration were seen as draining the US economy and spirit of their vitality. Japan was very much on the rise and Europe was attempting to deal with its decade-long lethargy by implementing the Single European Act and thereby realizing the potential inherent in the treaty of Rome. Why, then, should Canada link itself more closely to the US when some sort of third option II2 might have been possible and would, if achieved, certainly bring greater gains to Canada? As things turned out, the US had a very good decade during the 19905, Japan slipped into a decade of stagnation, and the European Union dithered. China and India both soon emerged but they were not part of the argument during the mid-late 19803. Canada was able to increase its exports to the US by a very impressive 140 percent between 1992 and the end of the decade, so this concern of US decline actually had little to speak for it, and was at best premature.The architecture of North American economic relations was also seen as a structure that militated against the interests of the two smaller countries. In 1992, the US was the market for 77 percent of Canada's exports and for 81 percent of Mexico's, while Canada and Mexico accounted for just 20 percent and nine percent, respectively, of US exports. Incidentally, Canada was the market for just two percent of Mexico's exports and Mexico took only .4 percent of Canada's exports. Clearly, secure access into the US market was the only issue here. What this meant was that the US would be quite indifferent in terms of aggregate trade flows, while increasing these flows was something of crucial importance to the vitality of both the Canadian and Mexican economies. Thus, the US was understood to be in the driver's seat in negotiations, and both Mexican and Canadian critics argued that the US would not be inclined to give much if anything in exchange for significant concessions by the two other negotiating teams. …

The Legal Impact of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement on Canadian Water Exports

In recent years, the issue of Canadian water exports has assumed a prominent position on the policy agenda of both Canada and the United States. As water supplies in several western states of the U.S.A. have been increasingly depleted over the past three decades, the threat of a water crisis has raised interest in the possibility of diverting Canadian waters, originating presumably in the Great Lakes Basin. While the beginning of the 1980s has already witnessed a number of heated debates over Great Lakes water transfers, the signing of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement on the 2nd of January 1988, revives the polemic since it is viewed by some as a new menace to the future supply of Canadian waters. The present paper, which is divided in two parts, begins with an examination of a number of events which have raised significant concern about the prospect of major water transfers from the Great Lakes Basin, the latest being the conclusion of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. It then analyses the legal effects of the Agreement on Canadian water resources. This study concludes that there is nothing in the deal to suggest that Canada has in any way conceded future access to its water resources to the United States.

Canada—U.S. Relations after Free Trade: Lessons Learned and Unmet Challenges

Fifteen years ago, Canada and the United States entered into a historic commitment: to facilitate and manage the growing integration of their two markets on a bilateral, rather than a multilateral, basis. The result was the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which entered into force on January 1, 1989. Five years later, they agreed to add Mexico to the mix and convert the FTA into the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). By 2004, Canadians could look back on fifteen years of experience under the new arrangement. What have we learned from that experience? Let me share six lessons that fifteen or more years of involvement in the free trade project have taught me, and draw out some guidance for the future. Three of the lessons are largely political, while the other three are more academic or intellectual in their scope. They can be summarized, briefly, in the following way: 1. Projects of this nature require an unique partnership of political leader and policy entrepreneur. Without political leaders of courage, conviction, and vision, it would not have proved possible to confront the deeply entrenched but false fears that are so critical to the continued appeal of protectionism and nationalism, and without policy entrepreneurs prepared to challenge the purveyors of conventional wisdom in government and academia, freer trade in North America would have remained captive of incrementalism and multilateralism. 2. Success on this project relied on the support of business in all three countries which dared to dream big; it was important to listen to their diagnosis of the problems that needed to be addressed and equally important to ignore their prognosis of what to do about them. 3. So-called civil society groups added spice to this project and reminded us all that there is more to North America than trade and economics, but the project would not have succeeded if political leaders and negotiators alike had not learned to keep the views of the most trenchant civil society groups in perspective; theirs was usually a different agenda. 4. Economists were generally right about the benefits of free trade, but have not always proved helpful in finding the best way of achieving them. 5. Political scientists were generally wrong about the threats posed by freer trade, but they can make an important contribution to designing the institutional underpinnings required to gain the full benefits of freer trade. 6. Finally, it is important to involve the lawyers, but only if you keep them in their place. A Partnership of Vision and Knowledge For many people, the most admired politician of the twentieth century was Winston Churchill. It is not difficult to understand why. Churchill exemplified the best qualities of leadership: vision, courage, and bulldog determination. He demonstrated that if a project is worth doing it must be done, regardless of the politics. He also understood that leadership requires the ability to draw out the best in others and an understanding that most major projects can only be accomplished through the cooperative efforts of many individuals. North American free trade was such a project. It required the vision of an exceptional generation of political leaders prepared to swim against the tide of the postwar Keynesian consensus, but it also took the dogged determination of policy entrepreneurs in all three capitals ready to reject the conventional wisdom of entrenched bureaucracies. Remarkably, the 1980s produced both groups of people in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City: political leaders like Brian Mulroney, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Bush, and Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who were prepared to reject the easy path of ever-growing statism; and advisors and policy entrepreneurs capable of translating their priorities and values into workable policies and programs. The result was a fundamental re-ordering of the relationship between government and society. …

From Protectionism to Regionalism: Multinational Firms and Trade-Related Investment Measures

Trade-related investment measures (TRIMs) have been a key issue in regional and multilateral trade negotiations, but they have received little attention in theoretical work to date. This article analyzes the political economy of TRIMs to illuminate why regional arrangements have been a popular framework for eliminating them. The main argument is that multinational firms often demand safeguards when TRIMs are being liberalized, particularly if they have large sunk costs due to asset specificity. In general, regional arrangements are better equipped than multilateral rules to incorporate the safeguards these firms demand: regionalism requires governments to make binding commitments, and it creates opportunities to discriminate against outsiders. A case study of lobbying by U.S. companies with FDI in Canada from the early twentieth century to the negotiation of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement illustrates these points. The article concludes that regional arrangements are likely to remain more active, and more successful, than multilateral discussions in managing the commitment problems inherent in liberalizing TRIMs.

Intranational Trade Diversion, the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, and the L Curve

Abstract This paper provides an empirical analysis of the comparative evolution of intranational and international trade in the Canadian provinces since 1981. We establish a striking empirical fact, the L curve, that characterizes the comparative evolution of intranational (interprovincial) and international trade shares to GDP between 1981 and 2000. We also use a panel data model to evaluate the impact of changing trade costs induced by the CUSFTA on the intensity of international and interprovincial trade. The analysis casts doubt on the intranational trade diversion hypothesis, common in trade models such as the structural gravity model of Anderson and van Wincoop (2003) that was used recently to revisit the Canada–U.S. border effect. International trade appears to complement rather than substitute for interprovincial trade.

Death of the Nation-State? Global Mass Culture in the Twenty-First Century: A Roundtable Discussion

Editor's Note: This essay is Professor Stuart's summation of the opening roundtable he moderated at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations meeting in Toronto, Ryerson University, June 2000. Panelists: Tyler Cowen, Economics, George Mason University Matthew Fraser, Communications, Ryerson Polytechnic University Diane Pacom, Sociology, University of Ottawa Reginald C. Stuart, History and Politics, Mount Saint Vincent University Joel Swerdlow, National Geographic magazine Global has become a cliche with a speed that mirrors the pace of the Internet age. This panel probed how the substance beneath the glib surface in the case of Canadian-American cultural linkages might offer a new perspective for the study of this phenomenon in the context of United States foreign policy. Readers of Diplomatic History and other periodicals will have noted how the theme of has increasingly informed understanding of the origins, development, execution, and evolution of United States foreign affairs. No longer is foreign policy considered solely in terms of power in international relations. The United States's international stature and influence are now seen as a complex amalgam of economic interests, ideological perspectives, the values and preoccupations of its citizens as individuals and groups, as well as geopolitical considerations. James A. Field's study of American interests in the Mediterranean in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as well as William Applem an Williams's many studies have prepared us to see Jack Valenti and Hollywood and America's entertainment industry as vital actors in United States foreign policy. Some seventy years ago, Carl Becker argued that the histories most characteristic of a time would reflect current social concerns. The current focus on global culture, and the worldwide appeal and success of American popular and mass culture, suggest a timeless wisdom to his insight. Not all, in Canada or elsewhere, see globalism in a positive light. For a contradictory set of reasons, a hodgepodge coalition of protestors from around the world in unlikely alliance virtually shut down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in the fall of 1999, and threatened to do so again at Quebec City in April 2001. One form of globalism squared off against another. Over a decade ago, a coalition of Canadian groups protested the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement because they believed it would produce the denouement and eclipse of Canada as a distinct culture and nation-state. Save for a vocal few, such voices have mostly muted in contemporary Canada. Even so, as a global economic, military, political, and cultural superpower, the United States inevitably remains a homogenizing global eminence grise. The themes of this panel followed those explored by Joel Swerdlow and Erla Zwingle in one of the 1999 Millennial issues of National Geographic. Both authors found through whirlwind tours of cities and countries that international cultural mixing and diversity have a deep history, and suggest that local fears of foreign cultural dominance are often exaggerated and misunderstood. Societies have demonstrated an ability to absorb, change, and use foreign ideas and ways to refashion themselves and not only thrive, but flourish. This multidisciplinary panel took the same view in the end, not only in general but in the particular, of Canada and the United States over the past century. Each panelist saw the United States as the dominant, apparently overwhelming force in North America. Yet, the Canadian nation-state survived and flourished, they argued. Each also explored various definitions of culture, suggested ambiguity in the term itself. Withal, global mass culture emerged as America's mass produced and marketed products spread into Canada (and beyond) over the past century. To a surprising degree, the panelists (three Canadians and two Americans) discounted the Cassandra cries of doom that nationalists and traditionalists have so favored. …

Trade creation and trade diversion in the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement

In this paper the changes in trade patterns introduced by the Canada‐United States Free Trade Agreement are examined. Variation in the extent of tariff liberalization under the agreement is used to identify the impact of tariff liberalization on the growth of trade both with member countries and non‐member countries. Data at the commodity level are used, and the results indicate that the Canada‐United States Free Trade Agreement had substantial trade creation effects, with little evidence of trade diversion. JEL Classification: F13, F14 Création de commerce et diversion de commerce dans l'Accord de libre‐échange Canada‐U.S. Ce mémoire examine les changements dans les patterns de commerce international engendrés par l'Accord de libre‐échange entre la Canada et les Etats‐Unis. La variation dans l'intensité de libéralisation tarifaire selon les secteurs dans l'Accord est utilisée pour identifier l'impact de la libéralisation tarifaire sur la croissance du commerce à la fois entre les pays membres et avec les pays non‐membres. A l'aide de données par produits, on montre que l'Accord a eu des effets substantiels de création de commerce mais qu'il n'y a pas lieu de croire qu'il y a eu beaucoup de diversion de commerce.

Building a partnership: the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement

Drawn from a 1998 conference and Michigan State University, this work presents a selection of papers and commentary examining, in detail, the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. It includes essays by Canadian and American policy makers.

What have the FTA and the NAFTA done to the Canadian labor market?

A central concern with respect to globalization is its effects on institutions. Institutions are thought to provide protections against the casual damage inflicted by market processes and, in various ways, to contribute toward aggregate economic efficiency. The effects of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement on the Canadian labor market and its institutions provide a useful case study of the effects of globalization because Canadian trade is so heavily concentrated with the United States. In this paper I show that, while the agreements imposed considerable costs on employees in some manufacturing industries, overall, Canadian institutions have not been substantially changed by the agreements. Where those institutions have changed, other factors have been much more important.

Pursuing Free Trade

IN RECENT YEARS, THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT has emerged as a leading proponent of western hemispheric trade liberalization and transatlantic free trade. Its efforts to transform the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and to promote free trade between NAFTA and the European Union (EU), however, have not been successful. Ottawa's ability to lead regional and inter- regional initiatives is constrained because Canada lacks the political and economic weight of the major powers, whose support is critical to bring such projects to completion. Ottawa should continue to promote free trade, but it should focus its efforts on broadening and strengthening its own relations within the hemisphere and with Europe.THE WESTERN HEMISPHEREWhen Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government announced in 1989 that Canada would join the Organization of American States, Canada's role in the region was enhanced. But it was Ottawa's decision the following year to join Mexico and the United States in negotiating NAFTA that gave economic substance to Canadian policy.The NAFTA negotiation was the result of Mexico's decision to seek free trade with the United States. The administration of George Bush incorporated the Mexican initiative into its Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, the focus of which was to reinforce economic growth and political reform in Latin America through trade, debt relief, and investment. The key element of the programme was the willingness of the United States to begin to create a hemispheric free trade area 'stretching from the port of Anchorage to the Tierra del Fuego.'(f.1) Although the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement negotiated three years earlier would become a model for NAFTA, Ottawa was not eager to join the talks. Canada's trade and investment ties with Mexico were limited and the government was not anxious to reopen the divisive domestic debate that had accompanied free trade with the United States. It decided to participate in order to avoid a 'hub and spoke' arrangement that would leave the United States as the only country with privileged access to the others' markets. After the negotiations began, Ottawa's main objective was to protect and improve upon the gains it had achieved in the Canada-United States pact.By the time the bruising United States debate over ratification of NAFTA, which pitted labour and environmental groups against free trade supporters, ended in 1993 American enthusiasm for hemispheric free trade had faded. Deepening divisions in Congress over the place of labour and environmental standards in trade pacts prevented President Bill Clinton's administration from securing renewal of 'fast track' authority to negotiate future agreements that would not be subject to legislative amendment. The result was that the United States was no longer able to play its crucial leadership role in trade matters.(f.2)As the United States commitment to hemispheric free trade weakened, Canada's commitment increased. Jean Chretien's Liberal government, which had been highly critical of NAFTA while in opposition, reversed itself when it came to power and became a leading supporter of the agreement's expansion as a stepping stone to free trade in the hemisphere. A hemispheric accord would allow Ottawa to diversify its trade and to broaden the basis of its interaction with the United States while extending support for the multilateral trade system.The Canadian government, which had been encouraging the Clinton administration to continue its trade liberalization course, was therefore pleased when, at the December 1994 Summit of the Americas, thirty-four countries endorsed the president's proposal to negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005. In the meantime, Canada, the United States, and Mexico would explore ways to bring other countries into NAFTA. Chretien, Clinton, and the Mexican president, Ernesto Zedillo, announced that negotiations would begin the following month to bring Chile, which was seen as a key link between North and South America, into the agreement by 1 January 1996. …

Negotiating the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

In the preface to Wrestling with the Elephant, the author, Gordon Ritchie, says his book is a 'personal memoir' covering his experiences as a senior member of the Canadian team which negotiated the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and as an adviser in the private sector to companies involved in trade conflicts with the United States. 'It does not pretend,' he says modestly, 'to be the authoritative version of the truth -- whatever that is.'(f.1) So far, so good. The book is meant merely to offer a version of the truth. But his quip -- 'whatever that is' -- is a troubling one because the author poses a question about the reliability of his account of what must be regarded as one of the most far-reaching and significant negotiations in Canadian history.Master pundit Jeffrey Simpson, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail on 11 October 1997, stated that 'Mr Ritchie's account is likely to be as close to a definitive one as we will get until someone else also intimately involved in the negotiations writes one.' It is also 'a textbook from one mandarins perspective, about how Ottawa worked in the 1970's and 1980's.' If these remarks are to be taken seriously -- I find it hard to do so -- there is indeed cause for concern because we will be left with a picture of a barely competent Canadian team facing a duplicitous and bullying American one. In his review of the book, Michael Hart asks 'will this revisionist account take hold? Has the passage of time made it possible to uproot already firmly implanted ideas?'(f.2) These are good questions.Notwithstanding his disclaimer, Ritchie boldly asserts in his subtitle that Wrestling with the Elephant is The Inside Story of the Canada-U.S. Trade Wars. Note, the Inside Story. His memoir, no doubt, could be styled an inside story; his account of the free-trade negotiations -- the centrepiece of the book -- could then be better understood for what it is. But there is, perhaps, some difficulty even in this more modest title because Ritchie was not inside the negotiating chamber at critical times during the final negotiations and did not discuss his account with those who were. How else to explain his eccentric portrayal of some of the most salient and critical features of the dramatic last-minute breakthroughs which saved the negotiations from the dust-bin of history?It is curious that Ritchie, in the words of the Canadian chief negotiator, Simon Reisman, 'chose not to consult his chief, or other negotiators, as to the accuracy of his account.'(f.3) Reisman's critical review (in which he later commented that 'If you were to read the book, you would think the guy who ran the whole thing was Ritchie and this old fart Reisman was around ...') led to a curious public exchange which again raised questions as to the authoritativeness of Ritchie's memoir. The book's publisher at Macfarlane Walter & Ross wrote a letter of complaint to Time magazine, which, according to a report in the Globe and Mail on 29 October 1997, objected to Reisman's statement that the book contained 'numerous factual errors.'(f.4) 'I also felt obliged to point out' said the publisher, 'that Reisman had threatened legal action against the book. Is it not unusual that Time would allow someone to review the book who has threatened legal action against it?'Ritchie shared his publisher's view. In the same issue of the Globe and Mail he said that 'Reisman was on record as publicly threatening to take legal action, so it was surprising that he would be chosen to review the book, given that he had an agenda' (emphasis added). A journalism professor chimed in: 'If the review is to be a service to the reader, there's no point in giving it to someone who has an axe to grind.' This is meretricious nonsense. Who is more qualified to review Ritchie's book than Ritchie's superior in that negotiation? And if, by extension, everyone who is denigrated and therefore might, so to speak, have an 'agenda' or 'an axe to grind' is disqualified as being parti pris, who is there left in the negotiations to review it? …