We benefit most when we focus on exporting the goods and services we are the most efficient at producing.
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Smaller businesses contribute a huge amount of Australia’s national output but a tiny proportion of our exports.
A welder fabricates a steel structure at an iron works facility in Ottawa on March 5, 2018. U.S.President Donald Trump’s stated intention to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports could start a trade war.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Ottawa seems utterly unprepared for a trade war with the United States. The recent federal budget upholding equity values is noble, but won’t mean a thing if the government runs out of cash.
PA/Peter Nicholls
A conciliatory tone from the prime minister but Boris Johnson and Michael Gove continue to cause problems.
There’s a reason investors don’t like trade wars.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
President Trump says ‘trade wars are good,’ but history tells a very different story.
China controls 50% of the global steel industry but doesn’t export much to America.
AAP
China supplies just 2% of America’s steel, while Canada and Europe have sizeable shares and Australian steel producers depend on access to US markets.
Economic history suggests Trump’s ‘America First’ trade policies will put the U.S. last.
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
The president’s tariffs on steel and China mirror the misguided trade policies that helped precipitate the Great Depression.
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Leaving the EU single market and customs union cannot be compensated for by free trade agreements with other countries.
Trump has made pushing protectionism since the campaign.
AP Photo/Chris Carlson
The idea that the US is historically a free trading country is a myth. Here’s why that’s a good thing.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, right, and Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarrea, deliver statements to the media during the sixth round of negotiations for a new North American Free Trade Agreement in Montreal in January 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Donald Trump has described NAFTA as the worst trade deal ever signed by the United States. As NAFTA talks continue, here’s what Canada and Mexico can do if the unthinkable happens.
Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
EPA/Mario Guzman
The North American Free Trade Agreement forced Mexico into a crisis that turned into an opportunity. Could the same happen again?
Don’t expect any trade deals soon.
EPA-EFE/Mark Schiefelbein / Pool
The UK’s best prospects for a favourable trade agreement with China are to be found by remaining within the EU.
President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Trump touted his administration’s economic successes and laid out his immigration plan in an 80-minute speech to Congress. Our experts weigh in.
China is increasingly viewed by the United States as a full-spectrum adversary.
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The contestation of Asia will continue this year, with many countries facing internal and external battles.
Now that panel costs in U.S. will go up, will reflectors make a comeback?
Joshua M. Pearce
Raising the cost of solar panels coming to the US could rekindle interest in a simple but potentially significant technology: solar reflectors.
It will be the private remarks between senior Australian business leaders and foreign investors at Davos that will likely be the most consequential for the Australian economy in the coming few years.
Australia tried to negotiate a final deal for the TPP at the 2017 APEC meeting in Vietnam.
NA SON NGUYEN/AAP
The new TPP means fewer barriers for Australian exports, but there a number of loose ends – not least if the United States decides to rejoin.
Soybean crop on a family farm near Humboldt, Iowa, 2017.
USDA/Preston Keres
Congress is drafting the 2018 farm bill, which will guide agriculture, nutrition, trade and rural development policy. A former agriculture secretary explains how this bill reaches far beyond farms.
Canada’s NAFTA strategy is in big trouble. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is seen here meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in February 2017.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)
Instead of treating the Trump administration as a campaign adversary, Canada needs to start working with the United States to renegotiate a NAFTA that serves both countries, not regimes like China.
At least one economist worries we’ll be mostly poorer.
AP Photo/Go Nakamura
We asked four of our regular economics writers to examine a key theme they expect to flare up in 2018 and why.
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The astronomic rise of the price of bitcoin over the past 12 months raises fears that the cryptocurrency is set to crash which could see many people lose money.