Andrew Jackson is senior policy adviser at the Broadbent Institute, and the author of The Fire and the Ashes: Rekindling Democratic Socialism, available from BTL Books.
Given the huge imbalance, this would likely require more managed trade plus more proactive Canadian industrial policies. As a planned economy, China might be open to sectoral managed trade arrangements.
In this new age of corporate concentration, we certainly need a much broader response than competition policy alone.
The innovation agenda marks another incremental turn away from “framework” economic development policies. But the shift is unlikely to be transformational unless it is scaled up and accompanied by a greater role for long-term public investment.
Our trade situation was a serious problem long before the election of Donald Trump and new realities will demand a serious re-thinking of the liberal trade and industrial policies of the “free trade” era and not just more of the same.
What we need to spark a meaningful recovery is a big boost to the demand side of the economy in the form of higher wages and more public investment.
Acquisitions by foreign corporations of Canadian companies may be in the interests of shareholders and corporate executives, but harmful from the perspective of workers and local communities.
History is replete with examples of botched public-private projects which left governments on the hook for high costs and for losses, and public agencies do have the capacity to make good decisions.
Despite ultra loose monetary policy, business investment is very low due to inadequate overall demand.
It is to be hoped that political forces across Europe are up to the challenge of making the EU a force for economic and social progress as seemed to be the case in the 1980s.
