scholarly journals “Nervous nellies and nay-sayers”: Social movements and Canada-United States free trade

SURG Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Spencer Hamelin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Steel Workers ◽  
Economic Union

Free trade is part of neo-liberal economics, which is centred on the free market principles of limited government regulation and private sector competition. Free trade focuses on the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs. In Canada, the movement toward free trade began in 1985 with the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which encouraged free trade between the United States and Canada, and concluded with the 1988 federal election that sealed Canada’s fate within economic union with the United States. This article will combine a Neo-Marxist and Political Process Theory framework to address how during the period from 1985 to 1988, Canadian social movements adopted innovative tactics and mobilized against free trade to gain greater influence over trade policy. Keywords: free trade; social movements; Canada; United States; Auto Pact; United Steel Workers; Canadian Auto Workers, National Action Committee on the Status of Women; Council of Canadians; Macdonald Commission

scholarly journals The Coalition of the Unwilling: Contentious Politics, Political Opportunity Structures, and Challenges for the Contemporary Peace Movement

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Carty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Bush Doctrine ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

The Bush Doctrine, which was installed after the 9-11 attacks on the United States under the guise of the war on terrorism, postulated a vision of the United States as the world’s unchallenged superpower and the invasion of Iraq became one of the central fronts of this war. After failing to get approval by the United Nations for the invasion, the Bush Administration’s attempt to assemble a coalition of the willing became critical to the battle for public opinion to back the war. While the administration was able to garner some support, the coalition eventually unravelled and all troops are expected to depart by 2011 in what is perceived by many as a failure of U.S. foreign policy. This article discusses how different strands of social movement theory, including resource mobilization and the political process model, can be combined to examine how the coalition of the unwilling emerged and what effect it had on the failure of the United States to sustain support for the Iraq war. It contributes to the literature on social movements by assessing the ways in which structural- and micro-level mobilization efforts are often interconnected in order to explain both the how and the why of social movements, usually treated separately in much of the extant research.

Foreign direct investment and the demand for protection in the United States

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Goodman ◽  
Debora Spar ◽  
David B. Yoffie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Direct Investment ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Domestic Coalitions ◽  
Potential Benefits

Over the past decade, foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States has grown dramatically, changing the composition of many U.S. industries and bringing foreignowned firms into the domestic political process. Presumably, FDI also has affected the politics of protection, by both altering the domestic coalitions around protectionist demands and shifting the potential benefits that protectionism is likely to bring. To understand this process, we create and test a model that examines the level of inward investment and the extent to which this investment either complements or substitutes for existing import levels. Import-complementing investment, we suggest, will cause a split in protectionist demands, with local producers favoring protectionism and foreign investors pushing for free trade. Import-substituting investment, by contrast, will create convergent interests between local and foreign producers. In both cases, inward FDI reshuffles traditional alliances and demands for protection, challenging many prevailing views about protectionism in the United States.

scholarly journals Marketing Alberta Natural Gas in the United States after the Free Trade Agreement: Negotiating the U.S. Regulatory Maze

1990 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Douglas F. John
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Gas ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Energy Regulatory

Although the border between Canada and the United States for natural gas has been open for some time now, the free-market development of natural gas industries is changing from short-term deal-making to long-term industry placement. Here the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement will take on a critical role in permitting decisions on elements of trade to be made more confidently. This article focuses on key U. S. federal regulatory principles and programs and how Congress's intention in the Natural Gas Act has been carried through so that the federal government will no longer occupy the field of gas regulation, but ensure that where the use of that commodity involves the interests of two or more states, the overall national public interest would be protected. Therefore, producing states would regulate the physical production of gas before it enters the stream of interstate commerce as well as control matters entirely intrastate in nature. The future of contract demand conversions and gas inventory charges will allow customers to purchase gas from a variety of competitive suppliers without suffering a loss of service reliability. In effect gas inventory charges represent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's attempt to prevent pipelines from finding them selves with massive take-or-pay liabilities. Through Order No. 436, the Commission has attempted to streamline the regulatory approval process for pipeline construction projects and in turn to foster market competition. The author argues that rate reform is making its way towards what he feels is its natural conclusion where contract, rather than regulation, will be the principal determinant of right and obligation between industry participants at the interstate level. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would become more of a referee than director for questions of anti-competitive behaviour in the use of interstate facilities.

Violence, Social Movements, and Black Freedom Struggles

Contention ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
AK Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Freedom Struggles

George Floyd’s murder by police on 26 May 2020 set off a cycle of struggle that was notable for its size, intensity, and rate of diffusion. Starting in Minneapolis, the uprising quickly spread to dozens of other major cities and brought with it a repertoire that included riots, arson, and looting. In many places, these tactics coexisted with more familiar actions like public assemblies and mass marches; however, the inflection these tactics gave to the cycle of contention is not easily reconciled with the protest repertoire most frequently mobilized during movement campaigns in the United States today. This discrepancy has led to extensive commentary by scholars and movement participants, who have often weighed in by considering the moral and strategic efficacy of the chosen tactics. Such considerations should not be discounted. Nevertheless, I argue that both the dynamics of contention witnessed during the uprising and their ambivalent relationship to the established protest repertoire must first be understood in historical terms. By considering the relationship between violence, social movements, and Black freedom struggles in this way, I argue that scholars can develop a better understanding of current events while anticipating how the dynamics of contention are likely to develop going forward. Being attentive to these dynamics should in turn inform our research agendas, and it is with this aim in mind that I offer the following ten theses.

scholarly journals Radio Spectrum Management and RFI in the United States

1991 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 174-175
Author(s):  
R. Marcus Price
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radio Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Management ◽  
Federal Communications Commission ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Body

ABSTRACTIn the United States, civil common carrier telecommunications are provided by private companies, not by any agency of the government. Regulation of these services and spectrum management oversight is provided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency of the government. Government telecommunications are operated by individual agencies, e.g. the Department of Defense, under the overall regulation of the Office of Spectrum Management of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a government body separate from the FCC. In bands shared by the civil and government sectors, liaison and coordination is effected between the FCC and the NTIA.

Remarks by Bert Lockwood

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 82-86
Author(s):  
Bert Lockwood ◽  
Beatrice Brickell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Justice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Southern Rhodesia

I would like to address myself to international outlaws and what domestic procedures are available to arrest their activities. While at first glance the nexus between domestic justice and international justice may seem tenuous, I wonder: Is it surprising that the same administration that is so insensate over the deprivation of the human rights of blacks in Southern Rhodesia is the same administration that proclaimed early in its tenure that if you have seen one slum you have pretty much seen them all, and hasn’t visited another since? Is it surprising that the same administration that evidences so little concern over the political rights of the majority in Rhodesia is the same administration that “bugs” and sabotages the political process within the United States?

The Investment Provisions of the Canada—United States Free Trade Agreement: A Canadian Perspective

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 394-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Raby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
Trading Partners

This is a good deal, a good deal for Canada and a deal that is good for all Canadians. It is also a fair deal, which means that it brings benefits and progress to our partner, the United States of America. When both countries prosper, our democracies are strengthened and leadership has been provided to our trading partners around the world. I think this initiative represents enlightened leadership to the trading partners about what can be accomplished when we determine that we are going to strike down protectionism, move toward liberalized trade, and generate new prosperity for all our people.On January 2, 1988, President Ronald Reagan of the United States and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada signed the landmark comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries that already enjoyed the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world. The FTA was subsequently ratified by the legislatures of both countries, if only after a bitterly fought election on the subject in Canada. On January 1, 1989, the FTA formally came into effect.

scholarly journals The Dimensions of the US-China Trade War

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Mohamad Zreik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
China Trade ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Trade War

AbstractThe Chinese Ministry of Commerce issued a statement Friday morning, July 6, 2018, confirming the outbreak of a trade war between the United States and China. The statement came after the United States imposed tariffs on many Chinese goods, in violation of international and bilateral agreements, and the destruction of the concept of free trade which the United States calls for following it. It is a war of opposite directions, especially the contradiction between the new Trump policy and the Chinese approach. The proof is what US Defense Secretary James Matisse announced in Singapore in early June 2018 of “the full strategy of the new United States, in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific,” where China was the “sole enemy of the United States” in China’s geostrategic region. Intentions have become publicized, and trade war between the two economic giants is turning into a reality. This paper will give an overview of the US-China scenario of trade war, then a focused analysis on the Trump’s administration economic decision regarding China, and the consequences of this decision.

Domestic Politics and International Negotiations: the Politics of Global Warming in the United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Hatch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Negotiations ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
International Commitments ◽  
External Pressures

The United States chose an approach to global warming that came to be viewed by much of the international community as a barrier to effective action. In explaining why, this article analyzes the interaction of the domestic political process and international negotiations. It argues that—while external pressures brought to bear through the negotiations leading up to UNCED pushed the domestic agenda on global warming—the nature of the political process, in combination with the nature of the global warming issue itself, set the general limits for U.S. participation in cooperative international arrangements to manage global warming. That is, given the broad set of interests activated by global warming concerns and the ready access those interests had to decision-making bodies through a pluralist policy process, consensus on an approach to global warming proved impossible. The U.S., unwilling to accept international commitments that obligated it to domestic actions, thwarted efforts to get an international treaty containing firm targets and timetables.

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