MAKING STEEL UNDER FREE-TRADE

This paper examines the dynamics and the impact of the Free Trade Agre ement (FTA) between Canada and the United States within the context of Canada's primary steel industry. It is argued that Canada's leading p rimary steelmakers supported the FTA because of their belief that stee l markets were increasingly continental, and, because of their ideolog ical adherence to the neoconservative agenda of corporate business and the federal Progressive Conservative government. Steelworkers and the ir union, the United Steelworkers of America, opposed the FTA because of the loss of jobs that would ensue with its implementation and becau se of its larger ''right wing '' economic and political direction. The paper concludes that while - to this point - it is difficult to diffe rentiate the specific impact of the FTA from factors associated with i ndustrial restructuring in the steel industry as a whole, the FTA is i ncreasingly the central economic and political factor in the deepening crisis of the Canadian steel industry.