The $800 billion stimulus package pushed through by Obama has ignited a trade war with Canada, reports the Washington Post. In response to vague “buy American” provisions in the stimulus, “A number of Ontario towns, with a collective population of nearly 500,000, retaliated with measures effectively barring U.S. companies from their municipal contracts — the first shot in a larger campaign that could shut U.S. companies out of billions of dollars worth of Canadian projects.”

A trade war is also underway…

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Good article today by Bloomberg columnist Michael Sesit, who lays out the protectionist actions many countries are taking in the midst of the worldwide economic slump and warns that accelerated trade protectionism would plunge the world into a depression.

Unless governments get serious about arresting the trend soon, the chatter about 2009 morphing into a replay of the Great Depression will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 increased duties on more than 20,000 goods, inviting retaliation by…

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