The customs tariff treaty between the United States and Canada is an unknown treaty that constitutes the lives of millions of Americans and Canadians.
The 60 -year -old treats the water that is accelerating into the Colombia River, inhale from British Columbia via Montana, Idahu, Washington and Oregon, and provides the largest source of electrical extension in the United States. But parts of the treaty expired about the US presidential elections.
The negotiators were still weeks of completing the details of an updated copy of the treaty when the term of President Joseph R. Biden Junior. Then a contract of talks was shattered in President Trump’s hostility towards Canada. Canada called “State 51”, slapped the definitions on Canadian exports and installed to click on its water as “a very large faucet.”
in A controversial call In February with the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, Mr. Trump included the treaty among the ways that Canada said had benefited from the United States. The implicit meaning was clear: the treaty can become a bargaining segment in broader negotiations to reshape the relationship between the two provinces.
Prime Minister Mark Carne and Mr. Trump The heat refused During their meeting at the White House last week. But the Trump administration made even treaties with the benefits of both sides, you feel negotiations on the edge of the knife. The policies of Mr. Trump irregular trade led to uncertainty in the future of the northwest of the Pacific, which created new concerns about everything from electricity to control over floods.
Data that operates the Internet and artificial intelligence focuses on the strength of the Colombia River. Twilight Soccer Duke It Out games in Riverfront Parks funded by local dams. Irrigation of tanks supplies water to the acre of rolling from pink orchards. Coordinated dams hinder floods in Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere.
Mr. Trump touched a raw nerve among Canadians, who have long been concerned that the United States sees its resources – in particular – as looting. “They want our land, and they want our resources, want our waters, and want our country,” was a talisman of repetition of Mr. Carney during his successful career to the Prime Minister.
“Canadians feel this feeling of treason,” said Jay Ensley, until recently, Washington’s ruler, in an interview. The treaty has a complex network of cultural and economic interests. “It is not easy to negotiate with that, and this makes it more difficult when a man thinks on the table that you are a snake in the grass,” said Mr. Enseli.
A spokesman for British Colombia said that there was no “movement at all” since the US State Department stopped negotiations as part of a broad review of international obligations in the country. While this is a typical matter after a change in management, “this seems to be a strange expression of what is going on,” Adrian Dix, the provincial minister of energy, told nearly 600 people in a virtual municipal hall in March.
Mr. Dicks said that the local population has pulled him aside in the Save-on-Foods market to ask them whether Canada should withdraw from the treaty completely. “For the people of the Colombia Basin, this is a gut,” he said. “This is part of their lives, history and souls.”
If the agreement explodes, the United States expects that it will become “more difficult to control and predict” hydroelectric energy production, and increased uncertainty to prevent floods in the northwest of the Pacific, according to non -partisan Congress. a report. Electricity needs in the region can double in the next two decades, according to what is mentioned Estimates From the Energy Council between the states.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to comment.
The date of the treaty of the treaty until the day of the anniversary in 1948. After the heavy Raba rain, a 15 -foot water wall was eliminated in Fanport, Uri, a city directly outside Portland that includes thousands of shipbuilding workers during World War II. The destruction left 18,000 homeless people and began negotiations with Canada on how to better manage the Colombia River.
In one of the last days of President Dwight Eisenhower, the Colombia River Treaty, which was circulated between two priorities: Canada agreed to build many dams that would bear the control of floods to the United States, and America agreed to grant Canada half the additional electricity produced by the river through the management of joint flow through American dams.
The original agreement entered into force in the fall of 1964, with some judgments ending after 60 years.
Discussions began to update the treaty before the validity of the parts in 2024 ended during the first Trump administration. Mr. Biden stopped them for a short period, then resumed. In March 2023, the entire Congress delegation from the northwest of the Pacific Use a deal. After the slow start, the United States and Canada announced the outline of the last summer agreement, which reflects a completely different fact from what the treaty of the treaty in the 1960s.
It ended with the energy resulting from the original treaty until it was more valuable than it was originally expected, as the total of half in Canada reached about 300 million dollars per year. This was much more than it was, so Canada sold a lot of energy to the United States, which angered American aid tools.
The updated plan reduced Canada in almost half over time. This allows the United States to maintain more energy as energy demand grows for the first time in decades.
The cheap and clean electrical energy in the river has been a major clouds of technology companies looking to build data centers over the past two decades, and more with artificial intelligence increased their hunger to power.
“The country needs, as a whole, to understand how important the northwest of the Pacific in that emerging image,” said David Kennedy, who is studying the history of the region in Stanford.
On the other hand, Canada underestimated the updated treaty of the amount of water that it had to guarantee its storage to control floods, allowing it flexibility in giving priority to societies and ecosystems about tanks. The original treaty created radical fluctuations in the peak of water, and miles of dirt were detected when the water was pulled down to prepare for melting snow.
“Every year, this dry bottom creates terrible dust problems,” said one of the residents of Valentine, British Columbia, to Mr. Dicks in the city hall.
The new plan has created more stable altitudes for cabinets so that Canada can restore ecosystems along the beaches, and create a better entertainment.
Negotiations included the indigenous tribes, which had no opinion on the initial treaty even when dams were delivered from hunting and towns.
Jay Johnson, the Canadian negotiator of the nation of Silux Ukanagan, said in the virtual city hall that the tribes on both sides of the border found a common ground in restoring salmon. The updated plan has created provisions for additional water in dry years, which it called “necessary to survive salmon, especially in the context of climate change.”
In the fall, when some of the provisions of the original treaty ended, the two countries signed a three -year agreement, although the parts still require additional credits for Congress. Either side should give a notice of the contract before leaving the treaty.
“It provides benefits on both sides of the border, and is absent from that treaty,” said Jonathan Wilkenson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources in Canada.
No one is quite sure of what will happen next. Some of the people who worked in the deal are still in effect, but Mr. Trump has not yet appointed an assistant minister for Western hemisphere. This situation is more dangerous due to Mr. Trump’s attempt to reduce the workforce in the main federal agencies participating in the treaties of the treaty, including the National Oceanic Administration, Air cover and the authority of the federal authority.
With negotiations in the air, people close to conversations in the area hope that the updated treaty can still be resolved.
Barbara Kosense, a professor of law at the University of Idaho, said that although the Trump administration may not care about salmon or the involvement of the original groups, Canada has done. Ms. Kossense said that the water may flow in the direction of the river, but salmon swims towards the source, so maintaining the environmental rulings in the play can give the United States influence.
Supporters refer to years of support from the two parties from the Senate members Maria Kaneuel from Washington, the Democrats of the Senate Trade Committee, and Jim Rich from Idaho, the Republican President of the Foreign Relations Committee for Foreign Relations.
“There is no zero in the light of the day between the Republicans and Democrats in this matter,” said Scott Sims, CEO of the Public Authority Council, who represents the facilities owned by the consumer in the region.
The risks are not default. In 1996, after the heavy snow, the so -called fast rain pineapple was called warm rain in the Portland area, which launch a stream of water. The Army Engineers Corps worked for several days, manipulating more than 60 dams in the Colombia River regime with its partners in Canada to hold water.
A smaller river flows into Colombia It is still overwhelmed by waterEight people were killed. With the temporary dams built of plywood and sand bags, the city center in Portland was barely saved.
Evan Ben It contributed to the reports from Houston, and Matina Stevez Gridin From Toronto.
