I was part of the team, when we negotiated the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, that was trying to arrive at a subsidies code whereby Canada and the United States would agree on how to provide incentives. We were not successful. We punted it to what is now the World Trade Organization.
The holy grail has been trying to get a subsidies code. That would be the ideal because we have our free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico. If we could agree on a continental basis how we're going to manage incentives and subsidies, that would be the ideal, because we are now moving to that era of industrial policy for the reasons I've enumerated.
If we did that, I think it would open up the door with Europe as well. We have a free trade agreement with Europe, and if we could do that under article 24—which provides that when you have a free trade pact, you can come up with a subsidies code—that would work well with the Europeans and perhaps with the U.S. Then we also have, of course, the free trade agreement across the trans-Pacific through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The danger we're talking about is getting involved in a gigantic subsidies war, which is already taking place. That's why we saw the Europeans in Washington last week: They're worried about what's going on. It would be best, particularly among the democracies with which we have free trade agreements, if we could come up with an agreement on how we're going to manage subsidies and incentives, because ultimately we're trying to strengthen democracies in what is seen to be an existential fight with the autocracies.