‘Chaos’ and ‘inconsistency’ from U.S. is worse than tariffs: analyst Canada can’t grow complacent after tariff deal: analyst U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday paused a plan for new tariffs on Canadian exports, saying a deal was in the works. Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, and Doug Griffiths, president and CEO of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, discuss the trade negotiations. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: Deborah, how do you weigh these developments through an Alberta lens? Deborah Yedlin: Obviously, we are very trade exposed to the United States, but because so much of it is energy, this is something that we don’t really have to worry about, energy not being on the table. Broadly speaking, it still affects the Canadian economy and so, anybody that trades with other provinces could be affected. British Columbia, for example, or Ontario, this would be a challenge because we know that the economic impact would be significant in both of those provinces, and so I think anything that moves us closer to preserving economic growth and opportunity in Alberta is good news. MH: Doug, Donald Trump says there’s a deal. What do you take away from how the Canadian government is responding to this three-day reprieve? Doug Griffiths: I think the Canadian government is doing everything they can. I said this a few times before, the challenge is: Is it a reprieve, or does this change 24 hours from now? Even if it is a reprieve and a deal gets signed next week, it can all shift. What we’ve seen out of this administration is a tremendous amount of chaos and flip flopping back and forth on what the issues are, depending on where the wind blows that day. That’s actually the biggest issue. Tariffs, of course, are going to be challenging, but the inconsistency around the tariff situation prevents businesses from making a lot of strategic decisions. Businesses need, more than anything else, consistency that they can manage around, and this chaos is what the biggest long-term consequence is. MH: Deborah, you mentioned energy is on the table. There isn’t confirmation, as yet, of Keystone XL being revived in this supposed deal. How much of a win would it be for Alberta if it were? DY: Just remember: We have the South Bow Bridger pipeline that’s already been proposed and is potentially reaching Final Investment Decision at the end of next year. It’s a smaller pipeline than Keystone XL was, Keystone XL was 830,000 barrels a day and the Bridger pipeline is 465,000 (barrels per day) proposed capacity. Something that increases exports, it’s an interesting conversation because it means that we’re more increasingly tied to the United States. What we really want to do is diversify our markets. Having said that, when you have more options on the table you have more options to choose from. So it’s really a function of economics and how it’ll move forward, if it actually does, and it needs certainty, like Doug said. We need certainty for everything, and this is a prime example. MH: Doug, how much conversation have you had the past several months with chambers of commerce in the U.S.? What’s been the message from your counterparts south of the border? DG: Because I’ve done lots of work with chambers of commerce in my previous life across the border, I’ve been calling out to everyone that I know, talking on the phone, and then even reaching out to the capital city chambers of commerce in every state. The message is consistent. I had two people that really didn’t want to talk, they were a little afraid, I think, of retribution for saying something. Most of them kind of shrugged and said, “I don’t know what’s going on, we need you guys.” They recognise how much trade they do with Canada in their city and in their state, more than I was aware of. So they recognise the consequences, the impact, and I think they really value and appreciate the free trade that’s happened between our countries. Of course, very few of them would ever go on the record. We had a couple, we did interviews across the United States, very public ones, but most of them are kind of afraid of where the situation is going to go because, of course, if you speak up and say that you think it’s a poor business decision, there’s consequences to that. But the business community in general seems to agree almost universally that we need free trade. MH: Deborah, on this side of the border, from the standpoint of the business community, where are we at with rebuilding and rejuvenating our own economy as a response to the Trump tariff turmoil and, to Doug’s point, chaos? DY: It has been chaotic. What we’ve really done a good job of is really working towards decreasing the interprovincial trade barriers, talking about the importance of building infrastructure. Prairie Economic Gateway being one example that’s going to be moving forward with the support of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We still have a ways to go, but, certainly what we need to do is not just deal with our internal trade barriers to increase the fluidity and the growth of our economy, but also to increase our ability to export outside Canada to new markets other than the states. We have something in the order of 51 free trade agreements covering 60 percent of GDP on the planet, but only 33 per cent of Canadian exports in the last year went to those markets. Let’s make sure we facilitate access to those markets as well, but we have work to do both internally and in terms of increasing exports outside the country. It’s definitely given us a different focus. MH: Doug, on that point of having work to do, how much more can we do here at home to further Trump-proof the Alberta economy? DG: We’re just getting started. I actually think the last year, year and a half, of chaos, has primed people to start to think about new opportunities, and we’re just starting to discover what the potential of our business community, of our economy, and our nation is all across Canada. We tell kids all the time the old adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” but we’ve had all our eggs in one basket for a long time. It’s been very convenient, it’s been very opportunistic. This is not all bad. This creates a new opportunity for Canadian businesses and our economy to explore what the rest of the world is and build new partnerships. I’ve said before, if all of this got resolved, if we got a new president and we went back to free trade, my biggest fear is that we become complacent again, and we’d be right back to a vulnerability that we should be overcoming right now, not diving back into.
