A Partner with Polar Pork is calling for an end to the negative posturing and the realization that a free trade agreement will benefit everyone in North America. Canada and the United States remain engaged in an active trade dispute with formal trade negotiations at a standstill. Florian Possberg, a Partner with Polar Pork, says with the exception of the supply managed commodities most agricultural products have escaped the tariffs so for the pork sector it’s been business as usual so far but the situation is unsettling.
Quote-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork:
In real time, we're continuing to do business. In the background, though, we really benefited by having the NAFTA, CUSMA, whatever you want to call our trade deal, in place for a long time, which gave us comfort and certainty that we could carry out business and make contracts and commitments to do business on both sides of the border.
If we go back to how we got NAFTA back in the days of Prime Minister Mulroney and President Reagan, there was a lot of goodwill and a lot of warm feelings.
They worked things out and came up with a deal that, quite frankly, over the years benefited both countries.We've got a lot of things to offer the U.S.
The U.S. has a lot of things to offer Canada, including security of our borders.
So, it will benefit both Americans and Canadians, but I think mostly Canadians if we can have an agreement that works for Canadians and Americans settled in some kind of timeline that gives us some certainty into the future.
Possberg suggests the Americans could survive quite nicely if there was no more trade in meat and live animals, beef and pork, but Canadians would be hurt significantly if we couldn't freely access the American market.He says it seems like the rhetoric on both sides of the border is intense but the negative rhetoric on the Canadian side of the border is at a much higher fever pitch.
Source : Farmscape.ca