CONTINENTAL SHIFT (1/4): Free Market Fictions and Trade Frictions

Welcome to Continential Shift, a series from The Break—Down and Geopolitical Ecology, where we examine the global rush for critical minerals and the struggle for resource dominance on the North American continent.

The phrase "trade regimes" may sound dry, but these rules and agreements are a defining architecture of the global economy. They determine who gets to exploit a country’s resources, and who profits from it. They determine whether states can be sued by private investors and corporations, or whether domestic sovereignty—of the state, or of Indigenous peoples, for example—is protected.

In our first episode we’re joined by historian Quinn Slobodian and economist Isabel Estevez to unpack how longstanding trade rules, investor protections and liberalization have shaped how resources are extracted and governed in North America. 

After the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement entered limbo last week when negotiators failed to make the July 1st deadline for agreeing a new deal, those same rules and institutions are suddenly more shaky than they’ve been for years, raising big questions about how, and in whose interest, the global race to dominate critical minerals will be run.

Continental Shift is made possible by support from the Public Scholars Initiative at the University of British Columbia.