Absolutely. Thank you for the question.
Today Canada enjoys a lower relative corporate tax rate than the United States. If the U.S. lowers its rate in a significant way, which I believe will occur—I don't know what level it will go to, that will be the subject of a negotiation—I think that has the potential to have a big effect on Canadian competitiveness.
It's not just about tax rates, although that's really important. If in two years in the United States we have a lower corporate tax rate, some version of a border adjustment tariff, and some incentive to repatriate funds that come from overseas, and you combine those with a preference for American inputs and manufacturing and “buy and hire American”, that's a fundamental challenge to Canadian corporate competitiveness.
That's why we strongly advocate for Canada and the United States to go at this together and have a complementary economic system, because that's what we've had not just since the NAFTA, not just since the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and not even just since the 1965 Canada-U.S. Autopact—which is what kind of started all of this—but since back in the forties, when we started free trade in agricultural equipment, like tractors, combines, and things like that. That's the approach we need to take, in my opinion, so that we are an economic unit, and that's the way business deals with it. If policy-makers could get closer to that so that we can take on competitive challenges around the world, that would be better. However, if we diverge, and the United States under the Trump administration, the Republican leadership, and the 115th Congress goes at what it says it's going to do, that creates some important questions for Canadian policy-makers, to be sure.