A partner with Polar Pork suggests, despite widespread support among North American farmers for continuation of the Canada U.S. Mexico Agreement the status of the review remains uncertain.The first official mandatory review of the Canada U.S. Mexico Agreement is set for July 1st.
Florian Possberg, a partner with Polar Pork, observes although the agreement has benefitted farmers in all three countries there is no definitive information to suggest the review has been done or any indication that outhandling issues have been settled between the United States and Canada.
Quote-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork:
It's hard to really gauge where we're at with these discussions because there's no real clear path.Some of the statements that the President of the United States has made tends to say that we're not in a very good position and some of the feedback we get from trade negotiators is that there's a lot of positive goodwill between the two nations and there's a strong will to have things satisfactorily resolved.
So, we really do get mixed messages and being six days away from the end of June when this major trade agreement is meant to be reviewed, we really don't know what's going to happen.There's no real clear guidelines or information coming back to us that gives us much comfort that there's been any real progress.
We do know that we have a lot of support from our American and Mexican counterparts to continue to have an integrated market.We're not sure exactly what the outcome will be when the politicians put pen to paper.So, I think we're going to kind of be flying by the seat of our pants for the next while and not really knowing what the outcome of this review is going to be.
Possberg notes feedback from American pork producers is that they very strongly support continuation of our free trade because it benefits both of our countries but what farmers desire and what the politicians agree to might not be in total alignment.
Source : Farmscape.ca