What do you know? Canada isn?t playing nicely with the American dairy industry once again, using loopholes and double-talk to keep our products out of their stores.
You might want to ask me, ?But Dustin didn?t we address the dairy situation when we negotiated the USMCA trade agreement. Didn?t we have to give up something to get Canada to go along??
The short answer is, ?Yes, we did.? That?s why there are provisions built into the USMCA, and that is why the dairy industry is asking the government to invoke those clauses. According to these groups, Ottawa has shown conclusively that has no intentions of honoring its part of the bargain on dairy access.
United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said he had a very direct conversation with his Canadian counterpart, Marie Claude Bibeau during the G-7 summit.
He said that he was very emphatic in communicating his disappointment with Canada not honoring their deal with the U.S. while they have a very similar agreement with the European Union that they ARE honoring.
Vilsack also said that the USDA and the U.S. Trade Representative are not going to stand for this, and not expect them to knuckle under.
Vilsack is hopeful that it won?t come to using tariffs to make their point once again, but he isn?t going to shy away from it either.
In January of this year a USMCA dispute panel ruled that what Canada was doing with the TRQ system was in direct violation of the agreement. Canada issued a new proposal in March that didn?t change much of anything.
