Rob North on Free Trade, Tariffs, and the Price We’re Paying For Globalism

An Old School CBC Journalist Looks Back At The High Cost of Free Trade, How We Got Here, And What Could Come Next

I’m happy to count Rob North as a friend and… well, what do you even call a person whose stories have guided, informed, and entertained you for 40 years? He wrote a note on social media this week that really made sense to me, so I was happy to take the occasion to speak with him and get permission to share it with you.

For over 35 years, Rob North dedicated his career to CBC News, becoming a trusted voice in Nova Scotia. From mining disasters to bagpipe competitions, his reporting not only informed but also connected, and comforted communities across the region. As he bid farewell to the newsroom in 2014, North left behind a legacy of journalistic excellence and a commitment to storytelling that resonated with audiences far and wide.

For decades, Rob North stood on his Cape Breton roots as a steady voice in the ever-shifting landscape of Canadian journalism. The ideal we all imagine of the CBC. With a microphone in hand and an unwavering tradesman-like vocational dedication to the craft, he delivered the stories that shaped our national consciousness—stories told with depth, and clarity - homespun rather than politically spun - the kind of quiet integrity that’s increasingly rare.

I think Rob loved radio itself as much as he loved the fish, farm, and forest stories he often shared with us.

The Long View on Free Trade, Tariffs, and Canada’s Economic Blind Spot

Rob North’s note today, shared from somewhere in his post-career winter wandering is a rare thing—a reflection that stretches beyond the chaos of the current news cycle, reaching back to how we got here and looking up the road to where we’re heading. His decades of reporting have given him the kind of long memory that’s invaluable in moments like this, when the country is reacting in real-time to yet another economic jolt.

Reading his words, you can’t help but see the throughline: how trade deals that were once debated with passion, optimism, and skepticism alike have led us, step by step, to a place where our economy is precariously dependent, our industries hollowed out, and our responses reactionary. North’s note isn’t just about tariffs—it’s about the choices we made, the ones we didn’t, and the ones we still have left.

Here’s Rob’s take:

STEP RIGHT UP. STEP RIGHT UP. PAY YOUR TARIFFS TODAY!

In 1989, I was a reporter in the middle of my career with the CBC. That’s when Canada signed its first North American Free Trade Deal. I was deeply involved in news coverage of events surrounding Brian Mulroney and Ronald Regan as the two sang a duet of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and inked the agreement. It was a different time. I believe they used pens rather than sharpies, and affixed regular-sized signatures to the document. On a professional level, my stories reflected the facts, just the facts.

But on a personal level I was totally opposed to a deal that would lead to the closure of many Canadian factories, an end to many good jobs. It meant the closure of Canadian warehouses and handling facilities, not to mention all the services and related jobs that went with them.

I was against the idea of the rules-based arbitration process outlined in the deal. It was my feeling that in any dispute the mere heft of the USA would undermine our national interests. It would also cause us to lose control of managing many of our natural resources. It was pretty obvious we would often lose during disputes when American companies either sued or used the threat they would, complaining we were blocking their free access to trade.

Just one example in Nova Scotia is a huge and expensive fight over development-sensitive coastal area where Americans wanted to develop an open pit gravel quarry. Across the country there have been many other disputes where American power loomed large.

It also seemed to me that much ballyhooed benefits, such as bringing an eight-year-old car across the border duty-free was not much of a swap for what we were giving up. Trinkets and beads. As for all the talk about the massive auto industry and its cross-border interdependence as it exists today, we had the Auto Pact in days long before free trade. It’s always been a cross-border industry.

The Free Trade deal coincided with a major worldwide push towards globalization, which brought an end to many jobs in both Canada and the United States through “technology transfer". In the case of Nova Scotia that meant tearing down the long faltering Sydney Steel plant, but not until we made major investments in new equipment including electric arc furnaces at taxpayers’ expense. We then virtually gifted our investments to China because it was a “developing nation.” In the same breath we ripped down oil refineries sending them in parts to China and the Middle East.

Long story short, I never liked the deal. But in spite of my strongly held opinion, the North American industry has shape-shifted in a way that molded to make some people rich and create a lot of new jobs, including some good ones. But we advanced by bringing in thousands of temporary foreign workers and by contracting near slave labour in low-wage countries. Unfortunately, many of the jobs created in Canada were in call centers and American-owned retail stores. Profits were often exported. So were entire companies. Moirs' Chocolate Pot of Gold Factory in Dartmouth provided an array of good jobs. It moved to Mexico. The former factory now houses a large store that sells discarded used clothing. Many who kept better-paying jobs found their wages locked in about 1990, with only tiny increases along the way. Instead of an economy moving forward with cash benefits, the economy morphed to make access to credit easier. It created a New Age Company Store. Many are now on the brink of finding they were quite unknowingly living in Company Houses.

So here we are. Two free trade deals later with a virtual mono economy almost totally reliant on trade with the USA. We could have diversified our export trade partners, but we didn’t. We could have built a pipeline east, but we didn’t. We could have had a “Plan B”, just in case our closest international partner stabbed us in the back, but we didn’t. We intuitively figured friends don’t do that. Just like a jilted partner in a long and mostly happy marriage, it blindsided us. Now with our own national government squabbling and in tatters, we are looking for a way to keep our unfaithful partner from taking the house. We are swinging talk of Unity and National Pride as our heaviest cudgel.

And today our solution is to respond with tough talk while we impose countervailing duties on goods sold in Canada. In other words, we are placing a heavy tax on ourselves. One analyst said, they shoot themselves in the foot, so “dog gone it we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot too”.

There are other options, and good ones, but at this point the choices for a speedy response are limited.

Along the road, there are many things we could have done and should have done. But here we are. It’s hard times. Get out the old cookbook from the 1930s and the Woody Guthrie Song Book. Stand Strong.