Thank you, Madam Chair.
With respect to imposing import duties, my life has come full circle. I was born in a country which traditionally had very high import duties to the tune of 200% to 300%. It was a poor country. It remained underdeveloped. I did not know it then, but by not being part of free trade and in trying to protect the domestic industries through artificial barriers of import duties, like the domestic car and domestic two-wheeler industries, it remained underdeveloped for decades until it started economic reforms.
It is quite interesting to see developed countries like the United States and Canada and those in the European Union nowmoving away from free trade and imposing duties on various imported products to protect the domestic sectors. We don't know what the impact of this will be. Better experts and much wiser people than me can predict the future under this new regime of moving away from free trade and of using import duties to protect domestic sectors.
To my colleagues who have been asking that we follow the United States immediately in imposing import duties on Chinese electric vehicles, Canada is not the United States. The United States is a superpower, a major economic power and a major military power, and every single country thinks twice before it retaliates against any move that the United States makes, including imposing import duties, but we are not the United States.
The United States looks at international relations. Even though they have major political differences with China, they have good ongoing business-to-business relations with China. Major top officials of the United States regularly visit China. While emphasizing their political differences, they also focus on enhancing the business and economic relations.
However, we are not the U.S. We have to think that any move to impose duties on Chinese electric vehicles will certainly result in retaliation by China, so we have to be clear about which domestic sector we are willing to throw under the bus to impose this. Is it the canola growers who export to China, or the beef exporters, the pork exporters, the palm oil exporters or the soybean exporters? In the agriculture and agri-food sector, I think we are exporting more than $7 billion or $8 billion to China. We have a surplus of over $4 billion in our trade with China, but we have to be ready to see the retaliation and be willing to confront, in advance, which of these Canadian exports to China we are willing to sacrifice to impose these duties on electric vehicles.
It's good that we're doing a study. We should call all experts. We should call the Canola Growers Association. We should call the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance. We should call the experts who can guide us on how the imposition of import duties will affect our competitiveness in the medium to longer term.
I know you guys want to call the steel and aluminum sector people, who are the biggest voices in this demand, but you have to remember that in the steel and aluminum sectors, all companies in Canada are owned by foreign companies. These two sectors don't export to anywhere else in the world from Canada except for the United States and Mexico, so they don't care if China or any other country imposes duties on Canadian exports to those countries. Here we are trying to protect the most protected steel and aluminum industries, and they have the biggest voice in these discussions.
Anyway, I'm glad that we are conducting a study. I know my views will be in the minority, but we need to, and I'm glad we are going to, invite the experts from the various exporting bodies and the sectors representing the Canadian exports to different parts of the world, including China.
Hopefully they'll be brought in. We could listen to their concerns, their views and their thoughts, and we could also listen to the experts who could say how moving away from free trade and how imposing tariffs to protect the domestic sector will play out in the long-term health of the Canadian economy, of Canadian sectors and of our competitiveness.
Thank you, Madam Chair.