This BusinessWeek.com article describes the irritants in Canada-US relations and lists the steps that the US can take to alleviate some of the economic problems caused by the ban on Canadian beef and trade disputes involving softwood lumber. For its part, Canada should try to address political frictions with Washington on missile defence and the war on terror in a mature manner, without resorting to mindless anti-Americanism. Take the recent flap over missile-defence, for instance. Instead of suddenly and publicly announcing the Canada will take no part in missile-defence, the federal government should have publicly debated the issue in parliament and explained to the US administration (and Canadians) why we cannot take part before announcing the decision. As the article notes it is in both our interests to be nice neighbours.