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Trade sanctions against U.S. in works
Retaliatory action to Byrd Amendment applies $14-million on handful of imports

By STEVEN CHASE
Tuesday, March 29, 2005

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The Canadian government is planning, as early as this week, to slap a 15-per-cent surtax on a handful of U.S. imports. The move is intended to admonish Washington for not repealing the much-hated Byrd Amendment and would extract an estimated $14-million in proceeds over a 12-month period.

The Byrd Amendment allows Washington to funnel to American businesses any cash that is earned from U.S. duties levied on foreign business competitors. The World Trade Organization has ruled Byrd illegal under global commercial rules and called for Washington to scrap it, but Congress has turned a deaf ear.

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Other countries are expected to impose their own sanctions on U.S. goods over the next few weeks and months.

Last November, the WTO gave the final green light for Canada and seven other jurisdictions, including the 25-member European Union, Mexico, Japan, India and Brazil, to impose sanctions totalling $150-million (U.S.) on the United States for its refusal to scrap Byrd.

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Last December, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, said Ottawa and other world capitals may have to slap sanctions on the United States, as they threatened, before the U.S. Congress is persuaded to repeal Byrd.

President George W. Bush wants to scrap Byrd but Congress is more reluctant, Mr. Cellucci said. "I suspect that it will take the imposition of sanctions by Canada and other countries to get the Congress to act -- and I think eventually they will act."

Canada was authorized by the WTO to apply about $14-million in sanctions on U.S. goods due to the Byrd law. This amount reflects much of the duties Washington extracted from Canadian importers in 2004 and redistributed to U.S. rivals.

Should Washington ever funnel to U.S. producers the $4-billion (U.S.) in softwood duties it has so far collected from Canadian firms, Ottawa will be authorized by the WTO to slap much larger sanctions on U.S. goods.

[...]

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Posts: 609 | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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The legend up in Norman Wells, NWT, is that when the US Army tapped into the oil reserves up there and built a pipeline down south, they did it without the consent of the Canadian government. A contract was signed a couple of years later. I have found no evidence of this, but still, that makes for interesting folk lore.

From here.

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Pearl Harbor, a Japanese threat to Alaska, and a critical shortage of tankers on the Pacific changed all that in 1942. Anxious to secure a local supply of oil, not requiring tanker shipment, for use in construction of the Alaska Defence Highway, for use in Air Transport Command fields on the route to Russia, and for possible military operations in the Alaska Theatre, the United States Army under agreement, with the Canadian Government and Imperial Oil embarked on the "Canol Project".

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Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

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... he considers Canada's oil (we are one of America's top oil suppliers and have one of the biggest reserves in the world) a "domestic" source.

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You should be worried. Very worried.



--j_k

Posts: 3617 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

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(Get your mind out of the gutter!)

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But Canada is on top

Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged |