Before 1990 Finland had a large trading relationship with the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this trade relationship collapsed and caused a severe recession in Finland in the early 1990s.
Canada is highly dependent on the US as a market. If, as I believe is the case, the US is headed towards a long term economic 'wilderness', our economy in Canada is going to be suffering longer than most expect.
We should brace ourselves for the loss of a large portion of the auto industry as we know it. Ontario is realistically looking at a 10 to 15 years period as a have not province.
Our forest industry is also going to suffer because most of the product has been going into the states. Internationally we are going to hard pressed to compete with all the Siberian wood that will be flooding the Asian market for the next several decades. Siberia is huge, bigger than Canada and the US combined and more productive forest than all of North America.
3 comments:
Not to mention that forresters aren't taxed and unioned to death in Siberia, neither do they have to pay off the First Nations like in BC.
Very true Anon, it will be sad to see our wood industry go down the drain just because of pointless laws and taxations with which you can't realistically keep up with the cheap stuff from Siberia, sad, sad, sad...
Lorne
The choices are to reduce out labour and environmental laws to Siberian levels or throw up a steep protectionist tariff fence around Canada. Neither option is very appealing. Or, we could go for the free market solution and find another way to generate value from our forests.
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