State in Absentia? Team Canada in a Post-CUSMA North America

Abstract

Over the course of 150 years, Canada gradually associated with North American markets. This trajectory was interrupted in 2017 by the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. The consequent treaty, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), came alongside new threats of tariffs, American institutional withdrawal and supply chain localization. From a Canadian vantage point, does this post-CUSMA North America represent the same continental trade regime? One school of thought suggests continuity: CUSMA represents a cosmetic change as “NAFTA 2.0.” New Constitutional thinkers in particular observe the treaty’s institutional mechanisms as continuing to privilege capital over democracy. In this thesis, however, I observe discontinuity: CUSMA is decidedly not NAFTA 2.0. Rather, it represents the emergence of a non-cooperative continental trade regime. This argument is mobilized under a new framework, dynamic continentalism. As a diachronic contribution to the comparative continentalism literature, dynamic continentalism observes that continental trade regimes are constructed through both cooperative and non-cooperative trade policy. Here, continental trade regimes are understood as (1) a set of ideas driven by (2) societal coalitions and (3) institutionalized through cooperative (e.g., trade treaties) or non-cooperative (e.g., tariffs) trade actions. Under this framework, I profile a new dissociative continental regime characterized by neo-mercantilist ideas, nationally-driven coalitions and weak formal institutions. I observe this regime’s empirical fingerprints in three stages: pre-NAFTA regime collapse, NAFTA renegotiations, and post-CUSMA trade tensions. This case-oriented and mechanistic analysis is supported by a methodological triangulation of elite interviews, primary document sampling and archival materials. In profiling this context, I find Canada’s response lacking. Team Canada is a trade coalition committed to waning neoliberal trade architecture for which there is little regional appetite. Team Canada risks an associative trade strategy during a dissociative moment. Instead, I argue Team Canada should represent an industrial policy coalition favouring a recalibrated state.