excerpted from Maclean’s ‘The U.S. and Canada—singing in harmony? U.S. and Canadian business groups are urging their governments to coordinate rules and ease restrictions’ by Luiza Ch. Savage on Monday, May 2, 2011
Time is running out, according to Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat to the U.S. In a speech prepared for a border conference in Bellingham, Wash., he warned Ottawa that the governments have a year until presidential politics take over, and with it, a reluctance to talk trade. “The American election cycle will effectively shut down the process in January with the onset of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries,” he said. In many key battleground states, he noted, “NAFTA is a dirty word.”