Canada applauds NAFTA decision on U.S. softwood lumber duties

"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme" - Mark Twain.

This reminded me of this old joke I've probably posted before. Forgive the references because according to my archive files I saved this in 2003. Funny how things haven't changed much...

Like this makes a difference - the US will ignore it like they do every other NAFTA ruling...

Yup. The Yanks won't care. Biden is even more America First in almost all of his policies than Trump ever was. And Canada hasn't done itself much good international by exponentially increasing our self-serving talk about "how good we are" while simultaneously withdrawing more & more from international activities& obligations with each passing year. The same federal government that has endless billions to spend on items that are of strategic benefit for the Liberal party agenda somehow just found reason to cut another billion dollars from our disintegrating armed forces.

International agreements and international law aren't worth the paper they're printed on at the best of times. And Canada consistently gives out for free all the valid reasons we can, thanks to our indifferent behaviour, for the US to altogether ignore the decisions made by these toothless courts & review boards. Whatever.

It amuses me too that the US pounds on our supply management in Dairy all the time, but then totally ignores our agreements on Softwood.

Yeah, and nearly 20 years ago Mel Hurtig was quoting Canadian officials saying the U.S. ignoring the softwood lumber dispute "rips the heart out of NAFTA." Oh, and NAFTA was fucking useless when the American cattle rancher's associations were fighting to keep the border closed to our beef even after we sorted everything out with the mad cow scare up here.

And why is it that, even though we're the ones with the supply management, the Americans are the ones that ended up having to dump massive amounts of unsellable milk in farmers' fields?