Manitoba Pork is calling on government and industry to work together to ensure Canada is prepared for the next renegotiation of NAFTA. After winning the November 5th U.S. election Donald Trump will be sworn in as President January 20th.
As part of an article circulated through Manitoba Community newspapers and posted to the Manitoba Pork Web site, Manitoba Pork General Manager Cam Dahl warns of a growing trend toward protectionism and the need to prepare for next year's renegotiation of the Canada U.S. Mexico Agreement.
Quote-Cam Dahl-Manitoba Pork:
We've seen across the board that there will be a focus on agriculture and we saw that in the last negotiation of NAFTA so the starting point is we need to have a strategic plan in place before that renegotiation begins next year and we're not there right now. We need to make sure we aren't having regions of the country played off against each other.
We saw that with the electric vehicle tariffs in China where western Canadian canola is the first target. We need to have a strategic plan to ensure that commodities aren't traded off against each other and regions aren't traded off against each other. But we also have a really good story to tell with our American partners.
One of those is national security. We are a reliable partner. We're not going to cut off food trade to the United States just because of a political disagreement. In this growing world of protectionism and political uncertainty that's a really key point. We also need to talk about things like food inflation. Trade barriers hurt American consumers as well.
Those are stories that we can tell but we need to be prepared going into the negotiations and I really don't see the evidence that we are prepared right now.
Source : Farmscape.ca