Domestic politics skews U.S. view of fair trade

For almost four decades now, Canadian chroniclers of Canada-United States relations have savoured a line by Robert Thompson, a former Social Credit leader now forgotten for almost everything else he did.

"The Americans are our best friends, whether we like it or not," Mr. Thompson is widely quoted as saying in what was either a "malapropism or magnificent insight," as John Robert Colombo called it.

These days, the emphasis is clearly on the second half of the aphorism. The fact that the United States has deep-sixed our softwood lumber industry with deeply punitive import duties should be a reminder that the Americans are not our best friends and probably not our friends at all; they are simply our neighbours.