Canada and the United States

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 228

The United States and Canada share a unique legal relationship. U.S. law looks northward with a mixture of optimism and cooperation, viewing Canada as an integral part of U.S. economic and environmental policy. The two nations' mutual, largely unguarded 5,000-mile border does much to explain why: each is the other's largest trading partner, amassing $218 billion in trade in 1992; cross-border travel is easy; and they work together on common concerns about the quality of water and air. However, the relationship has not always been so cooperative. Although environmental treaties date to 1902, economic pacts have taken nearly a century to come to fruition. Traditionally, both countries warily put protectionism ahead of mutual interest, and they have retaliated in kind against tariffs, duties, and other barriers to free trade. Only in 1988 did the two enter into the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) (Pub. L. No. 100-449, 102 Stat. 1851), a groundbreaking pact designed to eliminate these barriers. It paved the way for the historic NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT (NAFTA) in 1993.

Early relations between the two countries were rocky. In the mid-nineteenth century, trade foundered on stubborn protectionist policies; each country feared the economic success of the other at its own expense. The 1854 Elgin-Marcy Reciprocity Treaty (10 Stat. 1089) was intended to open up trade in natural resources but it barely lasted a decade. Its failure prompted Canada to spend fruitless years trying to loosen U.S. trade restrictions before formulating, in 1879, a national policy of high tariffs by which it hoped to force the United States back to the negotiating table. But the table remained empty for nearly a century. The only trade agreement between the two nations was the GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE (GATT), a 100-nation agreement first reached in 1947. The generality of the GATT accords did little to address the specific issues facing these two trading partners and it caused Canada, in particular, frustration. But U.S. prosperity throughout the mid-twentieth century meant it could afford to ignore Canadian complaints.

The two were more willing to negotiate on environmental concerns. The landmark agreement in this area is the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. It established the International Joint Commission (IJC) to deal with the issues of water resource management, a set of concerns referred to as transboundary issues because of the two nations' common border. Made up of technical specialists from various federal, state, and provincial governments of the United...