USMEF Not Liking Canada Trade Safeguards

Canada's Department of Finance has announced that it would rescind a digital services tax at the center of a trade dispute between US and Canada, allowing negotiations between the countries to continue. But as US Meat Export Federation, Vice President of Economic Analysis, Erin Borer explains trade concerns remain for the ag community.

“In Canada, there has been movement underway for some time to try to safeguard in a way, their supply management programs for dairy and poultry in particular, and they have essentially trying to put guardrails around this program so that in these negotiations with other countries, but clearly with the US and Mexico through the USMCA renewal, so that the supply management system could not be in their minds, traded away or negotiated through these trade agreement updates, and that sends a troubling signal to many in the US, in that problematic areas for the US are being redlined by legislation in Canada and unable to be negotiated. So even some in the domestic ag industry in Canada have raised the concerns about the signal this sends.”

The target date for reaching a trade deal is July 21.