A Partner with Polar Pork is hopeful that, with the conclusion of three federal byelections, the government of Canada will shift its attention to working out a trade deal with the United States. On August 22nd, following the collapse of Canada U.S. trade negotiations a 50 percent U.S. tariff took effect on a range of Canadian imports, prompting Canada to announce dollar-for-dollar retaliatory counter tariffs will take effect September 8th.
Florian Possberg, a Partner with Polar Pork, says while the dispute is being described in Canada as a trade war the Americans are saying they are not at war with Canada in terms of trade and want to get a deal done.
Quote-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork:
I think both sides, or at least the Americans, thought we had a deal a couple weeks ago and the Canadians just pulled up stakes and went back to Ottawa.
If you can believe them, they're a little bewildered as to what happened. We just had three by-elections on Monday in which the Liberal Party won, going away.
It wasn't even close in each of those three ridings. The reality is that trading animosity with the Americans has made the current government a lot more popular in the minds of the average Canadian, which probably feels good poking the bear. But does that really help Canada in the long run or even the short run?
We don't know where this thing is going to go. The problem there is that the American economy is 13 times larger than the Canadian economy. For us to think that we can inflict equal pain on the Americans by escalating the dispute is absolutely naive. That's just foolish thought and Canada, quite frankly, has a lot more to lose than the Americans do so, I think we have to put on our big boy pants and swallow a little pride and actually get a resolution to this thing.
Possberg is hopeful the by-elections Monday gave the Liberals a comfortable enough majority to get to work with the Americans to see resolution rather than escalation.
Source : Farmscape.ca