Reflections on the Struggle Against the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 30 Years Later
Chris Hurl, Benjamin Christensen
The implementation of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) in January 1989 marked a decisive moment in the rise of neoliberalism as a political project in Canada. While the left, and socialist political economists in particular, played a central role in galvanizing the agreement and contributed in no small part to the demise of the Conservative government in 1992, the free trade agenda continued to move forward through the 1990s. This Special Issue revisits the history of struggles against free trade in Canada with two aims in mind: first to remember the coalitions through which opposition was organized, the mobilization of socialist critiques by activists and intellectuals, and the key events leading up to the adoption of the agreement. Second, drawing from this history to make sense of how things have changed over the past 30 years, as right-wing nationalists have increasingly taken the lead in opposing free trade, while neoliberals have sought to rebrand the project as “progressive”. How can those on the left effectively confront the project of free trade today while at the same time challenging both far-right nationalism and neoliberal globalization?
SSS Journal Special Issue Panel: The Struggle Against Free Trade in Canada (March 19, 2021)
Society for Socialist Studies
Launch Event for the Collaboration of Socialist Studies and the Free Trade Activism Project
Confronting Power, Money, and Most Economists: The Class Action of the Anti-Free Trade Movement
Marjorie Griffin Cohen
The Canadian anti-free trade movement was a genuine ‘movement’ that originated locally in many different places throughout the country and was soon consolidated in a loose coalition at the national level. It was extraordinary for several reasons. First, it brought together a large number of groups that had never worked with each other before and their coalitions were strong and effective. Second, it was a movement based on class issues and was understood that way by its leaders and most of those who participated in it. Third, it democratized thinking and knowledge about economic policy, and this, in turn, meant that many groups and issues that were normally absent from a discussion of macro-economic policy, became central to the debate. Fourth, the anti-free trade movement grew in relation to the specific issues of regions and groups but the critical arguments that developed over time focused on the problems of having market mechanisms dominate both the economic and social spheres. This scrutiny and discussion of the market system itself has not been replicated in debates on any subsequent major policy issue.
Canada’s National Questions, Free Trade and the Left
Paul Kellogg
It is now more than 30 years since the launch of the bilateral Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA), predecessor to the multilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the (now abandoned) Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). For a generation, these “free trade” initiatives provided an important part of the framework in which political movements developed in Canada, engendering debates and controversies which continue to this day. When a new moment of trade politics emerged with Donald Trump’s challenge to NAFTA, some veterans from those earlier anti-free trade battles were unable to see the new, white nationalist terrain upon which Trump was operating. This article – organized principally around the author’s own engagement with the anti-free trade movements of the 1980s – suggests that this inability to see clearly the new context of anti-free trade politics was rooted in the incomplete and contradictory left-nationalist theory which underpinned most anti-free trade politics of that earlier era. The article suggests that while there are national questions in Canada – in particular those associated with Indigenous peoples and with Quebec – the attempt to articulate a parallel “national question” in Canada as a whole has proven to be impossible.
Reflections on the Struggle Against the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Three Decades On
Bill Carroll
Dr. William K. Carroll responds to questions posed by the Editors regarding his reflections on the struggle against the FTA, three decades on.
Free Trade: A Struggle in Constant Transformation
Claude Vaillancourt
Reflections from the front lines of the free trade struggles.
Socialist Studies: Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies
Archive for Free Trade Activism