Opinion | Canada sent no one to make its case against U.S. tariffs. So I went instead. What I saw sickened me - Toronto Star

Barry Appleton testified before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative this week.

Canada failed to send a representative to a hearing that amounted to a debate over tariffs, writes Barry Appleton.

Barry Appleton is an international trade lawyer. He is interim director of the Balsillie Legal Advisory Centre at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and co-director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School. He testified before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative this week.

This week I sat in a hearing room in Washington while officials of the United States weighed whether to place new tariffs on Canadian goods. I returned home sickened by what I saw. American companies stood up, one after another, and asked their own government for trade vengeance against foreign competitors, dressed in the language of a forced labour proceeding. Across three days of hearings, I was the only witness with a Canadian connection to appear. No one came on behalf of the Government of Canada. The invitation for a Canadian chair sat empty.

First, why this matters. It is a Section 301 investigation, the same American law that produced the tariff campaign against China. Section 301 lets the United States impose duties on its own say-so, without a vote in Congress and without a treaty. Pointed at Canada, it can tax the things Canadians make and the jobs those things support. Autos assembled in Windsor and Oshawa. Steel poured in Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie. Softwood cut in mill towns from British Columbia to New Brunswick, where the mill is often the last large employer left.