Toro
And if they did, was there a mechanism available through which they were held accountable? And if not why not?
If businesses break laws they should be held accountable and if they're not why not?
Its not about businesses breaking the laws. It is about national governments ignoring rulings in international trade treaties that they signed to benefit their domestic industries. A trade ruling would go against Canada and Canada would slightly change the laws forcing the Americans back to GATT. This went on for decades.
To this day, there is no free trade in beer. The Americans finally reached an accommodation that still exists today as the Canadian government reached an accommodation over softwood lumber.
That is not to excuse the Americans for what they did over softwood lumber. It was a clear violation of a treaty they signed, and the American forest industry is the biggest loser industry in America. Rather, its this holier-than-thou attitudes in Canada over the issue. During the beer dispute which came to a head in the early 1990s, most of the Canadian media and Canadian political establishment framed the dispute in nationalistic terms, saying the big bad Americans were imposing themselves on Canada. Yet, Canada did the same thing to the Americans that the US is doing to Canada over softwood lumber.