The Executive Director of the Trade and Value Added Branch of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture is hopeful the new CPTPP will positively influence the renegotiation of NAFTA.
Canada and 10 others nations are set to formally sign a new Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement next month.
James Kettel. the Executive Director of the Trade and Value Added Branch of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, says the U.S. has taken a hard line during the NAFTA renegotiation and hopefully the CPTPP will encourage them to be a little more flexible.
James Kettel-Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture:
The government of Canada along with the provinces and industry have done a great job of engaging our counterparts in the U.S. in the agriculture industry and lobbying them to have an impact on the U.S. president and hopefully it's working.
I know the Republican Governors have lobbied him on this.
It also provides us a little bit of security.
We've done some internal analysis on NAFTA and, if NAFTA was eliminated, one of the areas we have some concerns on is the vegetable oil sector which is Saskatchewan's biggest value added sector.
That's the big opportunity in Vietnam so hopefully that will give us a little protection in that area or insurance policy.
The Canada West Foundation has done some analysis and it makes sense suggesting that there's more potential for Saskatchewan's and Canada's agriculture sector without the U.S. in it.
Source : Farmscape