Jim writes to the effect that US corporations only served
the US market up to the 1930s. I suggest he look at Mira
Wilkins work on the MNC. American corporations began to
invade Canada in the last decade of the 19th C. (See also
Southard et al., Canadian American Business which was, if I
remember correctly, was published in the 1930s.) The move
into Canada was, in my opinion, an offshoot of the trust and
merger movement. Having reached the limit of the US market,
the new corporattions could only achieve a larger market by
expanding to other countries. Given the communication and
transportation limitations of the day, the most availble
market was Canada and this was the period when the first
major wave of foreign direct investment occured in Canada.
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
