One easy way to offset the damage of Trump’s tariffs

By Peter Armstrong – CBC News

One simple way of offsetting the impact of tariffs has nothing to do with the United States.

Long-standing trade barriers between the provinces and territories act as a drag on economic growth, prevent businesses from expanding into new markets and make it harder on workers to move. Removing those barriers could boost the economy by more than the expected damage from Trump’s tariffs.

“Removing non-geographic internal trade costs increases trade volumes as a share of GDP by roughly 15 percentage points,” wrote University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe in a 2019 paper for the International Monetary Fund.