FRANCE 24’s François Picard speaks with Jean Simard, President and CEO of the Aluminum Association of Canada. According to Simard, the US-Canada aluminum dispute is not a conventional disagreement over trade, but rather a 'Trump posture that makes no sense". As American industrial demand substantially exceeds domestic production capacity, tariffs will do nothing to reduce Canadian aluminum from the US market. Protectionism does not eliminate interdependence, explains Simard, it makes that interdependence considerably more expensive.
Simard interprets the conflict as an accelerator of structural change within Canada. External pressure from Washington is encouraging Canada to reduce internal trade barriers, diversify export relationships, protect strategically important industries and research capacity and deepen its relationship with Europe.
Rather than forcing Canada to submit to US demands, sustained economic pressure may now be strengthening domestic support for full-on resistance and diversifying away from US dependence. The trade war is damaging and disruptive, but he sees it simultaneously as an opportunity to reconstruct Canada’s economic model and embrace new partnerships in other corners of the globe.
Europe occupies a particularly important place in this transformation and has the potential to move “from being a bystander to being a full actor”. Simard highlights the dispute as part of a larger contest over whether US allies will respond individually to American economic coercion or develop greater collective strategic autonomy.
