Originally Posted by Voodoo

When produce can be grown in Canada for less than it can in the US, Walmart will buy from Canada and pay the Canadians less. If it was free trade, they would pay the Canadians the same as the producers in the US.

Absolutely untrue. Produce has never been cheaper in Canada. Even if it was, there is absolutely nothing wrong with paying them less than the US price. Your statement is nonsensical. Everybody shops around for the lowest price. Why would anybody pay more than the going price where they purchase their goods? Canada imports most of their produce from the US. The US imports virtually no produce from Canada. What produce we do import, mostly comes from Mexico. The main items that the US imports from Canada are: oil, lumber, and automotive products.

In the past several years, the Canadian dollar has been higher than the US at various times. The US dollar is very weak and will continue to be so due to the massive debt we are running up. Canada is in much better shape than the US. They don't have a housing crisis like we do, employment is rising instead of falling, their financial institutions are in much better condition, and their government isn't running up massive deficits. Their debt ratio to GDP is much better than the US and they are strong in commodities. All of these factors contribute to a stronger CDN dollar. Unfortunately their strong dollar is causing problems in their manufacturing sector. The period in the 80's when the CDN dollar was very weak was because Canada had a severe debt problem. That has since been improved greatly by them having budget surpluses for several years in a row