Today’s post is courtesy of Jim Stanford, the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) economist who has a regular column at the Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper of record:

Asia must open its markets – or stop flooding ours (subscription required):

Chrysler pioneered the minivan in the 1980s, from its assembly plant in Windsor, Ont…

Canada does minivans better than anyone. Yet we won’t sell a single one, in huge markets hungering for the product. Meanwhile, we scrabble year after year to defend every crumb of our home market against imports. Somehow, we’re getting all the downside of globalization — but none of the upside….

The bottom line: Offshore imports will take 25 per cent of our vehicle market this year (more than any other G7 economy), offsetting most of our traditional auto surplus with the U.S. Meanwhile, we’re frozen out of offshore markets: Barely 1 per cent of our total output leaves this continent.

Where to start? An obvious point is that originating a product doesn’t confer a perpetual advantage – which is why England no longer dominates the textile industry.

But the more distressing one is that it confuses comparative with absolute advantage. It may be that Canadian auto companies are the most efficient in the world. But that’s not the same thing as a comparative advantage, and it’s comparative advantages that drive trade flows. And Asia has demonstrated time and time again that it has a comparative advantage in much of the manufacturing sector, and especially the auto industry.