Trudeau cabinet minister Ed Lumley implemented an early ‘elbows up’ trade policy

It was the early 1980s and the Canadian auto industry was in trouble. There was a deep recession and the Japanese were making important inroads into the North American market with high-quality smaller cars.Under pressure from the U.S. government, Japanese automakers had agreed to voluntary export quotas and were about to build their first assembly plants in the United States. But they were reluctant to do the same in Canada.