I remember a conversation I once had with one of my former university profs, many years ago. At the time, we had just gone from a de facto dollar peg in Canada and from an import tariff system to Free Trade policies.

He said that the obvious implications were that all industries would shift to whatever country was most efficient at producing them, and that the only thing Canada was capable of being most efficient at producing was some commodities.

I hear our politicians right now, and hear hypocrisy. It wasn't that long ago when we ourselves had a de facto dollar peg. Even today, the government comes under pressure to intervene whenever the Canadian Dollar moves too much against the U.S. And the U.S. policy amounts to a dollar peg, at a lower valuation of the Yuan, and of the CAD.

What really has to be examined here is our system of international trade. It has been sold to us as a wonderful thing to have low import tariffs on goods from Asian countries. That all countries of the world should reduce tariffs to improve the global economy.

That's not what has happened. China, India and Japan have never hesitated to keep import duties on our goods in place. They are operating under entirely different models and sets of assumptions. And so far they have been right. They have made western politicians and economists look like morons and chumps.