Canada Takes the Lead Again. We Now Have the Worst Trade Deficit in the World. Yeah!!!!

I was excited when I learned that the Canadian taxpayer was the largest lender of sub-prime mortgages in the world, courtesy of Jim Flaherty.

And learning that we would probably be the last of the G-7 to claw our way out of the recession, set my heart to pounding.

But this. This is something to really be proud of.

As countries everywhere leverage government spending into domestic jobs, we pursue trade agreements that would undermine our already-weak domestic-sourcing policies.

Our passivity in the face of others’ pro-activity has taken us from trade feast to famine. A $55-billion trade surplus in 2004 melted away to a $27-billion deficit last year, knocking a whopping 6 percentage points off Canadian GDP. By that standard, we’ve registered by far the worst trade performance of any OECD country. As deteriorating trade undermines domestic growth and employment, Ottawa’s only response is to chase more free trade pacts – whether with Panama (economically irrelevant) or Korea and the European Union (potentially explosive).

Maybe we can have a party.