Canada

In an recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek printed online on September 18, 2011 entitled “Buy American and Fairer Trade Can Solve Job Woes: Alan Tonelson“, Canadians are put on notice that the U.S. is taking aim at value-added tax (“VAT”) regimes that do not charge VAT on exported goods. Canada’s goods and services tax (“GST”) and harmonized sales tax (“HST”) regime zero-rates exports.  Zero-rating means that Canada imposes GST/HST at the rate of 0% instead of the applicable GST/HST rate on domestic transactions.  This means that Canada may soon have a significant Buy America problem.

Alan Tonelson’s article has a subtitle “VATs Are Protectionist”, which is a signal that what follows is not going to be friendly.  Some of the points made by Tonelson are:

• New tariffs should be imposed on countries with VATs;
• VATs contribute to U.S. trade deficits;
• VATs raise the price of imports because they are imposed on domestic consumption 9thereby making U.S. goods more expensive);
• VATs subsidize exports (because governments do not impose VAT on exports); and
• NO exceptions from the new import tariffs should be allowed for products made by U.S. trading partners who have a VAT regime.

If this idea moves into law, both Canada and the EU countries, Australia, New Zealand and a number of other significant trading partners would be affected.

While I hope that this latest protectionist rhetoric does not go anywhere, Canadian businesses need to be concerned about this issue.  Canadian businesses need to communicate their concerns with the Canadian government and become engaged on this topic. In addition, businesses need to prepare and diversify their export base because it is clear that the U.S. market may become more unfriendly to Canadian manufactured goods.