Canada's Ag Visit & Wal-Mart Closing Stores

Canada's Ag Visit & Wal-Mart Closing Stores. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Canada's Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Lawrence MacAulay, was in Washington D.C. last week to promote bilateral trade and cooperation in agriculture. He met with Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, and with other U.S. leaders on agriculture. MacAulay said he and Vilsack discussed their commitment to growing agricultural trade between the two countries as well as the COOL initiative.

MACAULAY: Canada deeply values our agricultural trade relations with the United States. We are an integrated market which serves both countries well. In 2014 we shared $50-billion dollars in agricultural food trade. The government of Canada is committed to keeping this relationship strong. Our government is very pleased with the U.S. decision to repeal COOL for beef and pork. The resolution removes significant long-standing disputes between our two countries.

Wal-Mart is planning to close 269 stores which also includes the new experimental small-format Express outlets, in an effort to streamline the company. The closures will result in some 16-thousand job losses. Over half the stores being closed are in the U.S. Sixty store in Brazil will be closing as that market has been a rough one for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the U.S.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.