A partner with Polar Pork is expressing disappointment in the failure of the Canadian government to negotiate an extension of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. Although pork is excluded from the list of products targeted by a 50 percent U.S. tariff on a range of Canadian imports that came into effect Saturday in response to the collapse of trade talks, the pork sector is concerned.
Florian Possberg, a partner with Polar Pork, recalls we were told during the election a year and a half ago that we were electing a Prime Minister and a government that was going to settle the outstanding trade dispute within months of the election but things have gotten worse.
Quote-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork:
We're picking a fight with a very big and powerful country that we do an awful lot of trade with. Having a trade war with somebody that's so important to the economy of Canada, in my mind, we should have done a better job of negotiating a deal before now. We're told from the American side that Canada really didn't do much negotiating for some eight months.
Meanwhile, we're going around signing deals with unfriendly nations to our American friends and quite frankly to ourselves, the Chinese.We still have a huge tariff on pork going to China from Canada.That's never been resolved and we've never been given a good reason why that happens.To think that China is going to be our savior is completely naive.
We're quite frustrated.Like with any industry, we need stability and this whole thing is spinning out of control and it is not providing stability. For that reason, I'm very disappointed that our side hasn't made a much bigger effort to resolve this whole issue. Possberg says, when you go to war, you don't know what the enemy is going to do and it sounds like we're treating the Americans as enemies.He suggests we'd be better off to cooperate and work together for the betterment of both sides.
Source : Farmscape.ca