Following along the same thought, you're absolutely right, relationships matter, but so do the rules, and so do things like air routes and transportation linkages. We have the benefit of being a settled country. We have immigrants from around the world. Arguably we have not taken advantage of the language knowledge, the local cultural knowledge, all the things that we have, whether it's with central Europe or eastern Europe or north Africa or Asia. There's a tremendous opportunity for individual businesses as well as government policy to get in-house capacity--actually have a language expert, somebody who knows the Polish market or the Chinese market--and do things on a very practical basis.
So yes, relations do matter, but so do a lot of other things, and that really applies to the big and small issue. I think the really critical factor is whether you have grounds to actually gain some sort of an advantage, actually integrate in some way, so your businesses can find a reason for actually doing business with those markets.
The Chile example is very good, Ben, because we dropped the tariffs and nothing happened, and nothing happened because we really didn't find a way to fit together the supply chains of Canadian companies and Chilean companies.
That's the real fear that I have in China, Mike. It's that we really haven't found a way to integrate China into our supply chains or integrate Canadian companies into Chinese supply chains. We're seen as a provider of raw materials. That's it. We're buying more and more Chinese stuff. We have a huge trade deficit, of course. It's up to almost $20 billion now. The Chinese are finding ways to fit into our supply chain. We haven't found ways to fit into theirs.
If you want to make progress on a bilateral basis, you really have to find the critical success factor--what do you have to offer on a firm basis to that other country and what do they have to offer to you?