journal features

open border no more

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2001.09.26

The US is tightening security at the Canadian border, and the Canadian gov't announced today that it will be doing the same. I've read that Canada exports a whopping 80% of all exports to the US, and that 25% of all US exports head to Canada. Something's wrong here. It's not the imbalance, that makes perfect sense. Canada is, after all, just under 1/9th the size of the US in population. What's wrong is the American export figure. If the US is exporting so hugely to the Canadian market of 31 million people, it means that 100% of the US market is dealing with roughly the equivalent of 120 million Canadian consumers.

Assuming that a Canadian consumer and an American consumer require the same amount of goods per person (which is probably not unlikely, given the similarities in the two cultures), either the US produces most of what it consumes internally (and consumes the majority of what it produces), or the US must have an incredible trade imbalance with the rest of the world! How else can we explain that 280 million Americans are producing goods (and services) consumed by 120 million people? Are they selling to much poorer nations that pay much less for what they consume? I doubt it.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.