ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to develop the argument that trade policies with the United States have never been primarily economic and therefore should not be understood in those terms. It describes the evolution of party positions on trade policy in the twentieth century, focusing on the New Democrats from their origins as the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in the 1930s through their turnabout on the United States generally in the post-war years. The chapter examines some of the complex forces which shaped New Democratic thinking in the latest round of negotiations. Canadian history, at least until after World War II, can be read in terms of the pull between the North American environment which Canada shared with the United States, and the membership in and loyalty to a British Empire centered in Great Britain. By the mid-60s, the new democratic party faced growing pressure from within and without to move leftward and to do so in an explicitly nationalist and anti-American direction.
