With prime minister Justin Trudeau and the United States president Donald Trump meeting in Washington, D.C. this Monday, farm people on the Canadian side keep looking south as to what the new trade rules will look like.

Dr. Al Mussell, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems says, given the dramatic change in U.S. trade policy, the Canadian government will need to reformulate its approach to international trade.

Agri-Food Economic Systems has released an independent Agri-Food Policy Note, “Resetting a New Agri-Food Trade Policy Agenda.

Dr. Mussell says in addition to the planned renegotiation of NAFTA the U.S. is now considering a border tax on imported products and several trade actions.

“It’s yet to be seen but it’s entirely possible that part of the strategy here is simply to, almost call it Helter Skelter, it’s bringing so many issues to the front,” he said. “It’s the trade disputes that we know about or have a suspicion of, so that’s the wine retailing in B.C., that’s dairy, that is softwood lumber, there seems to be some likelihood of a dispute of some sort or other on automotive and origin content of automotive parts as well as the NAFTA renegotiation and the possibility of this border tax.”

Mussell says the Canadian government has only so much capacity to be able to participate in these things effectively.

“I use the metaphor of Helter Skelter, you just throw so many things at them that they have limited capacity to react,” he said. “Perhaps the intent here is that, if they do enough of this, they’ll force us to settle some of the disputes or that they just simply weaken our ability to effectively defend ourselves or adjudicate the case and the U.S. can score a win against us on that basis alone.”

Dr. Mussell says in addition to its dealings with the United States, Canada is still addressing the technical side of the CETA agreement with the EU and planning for a World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting late this year so the worry is that all this activity, will simply exhaust the capacity of the Canadian government.

On the other hand, as it pertains to hog trade under NAFTA, Florian Possberg, the Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board remains hopeful the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement will have a limited impact on the movement of live hogs and pork across the Canada U.S. border.

Possberg says while the U.S. withdrawal from the TPP may actually benefit the Canadian pork industry, there are many unanswered questions when it comes to the renegotiation of NAFTA. “My take is that it seems that more of the irritation with NAFTA is between the United States and Mexico than it is in the United States and Canada,” he said. “It would appear that any changes to NAFTA would probably be more significant to Mexico than it would be to Canada.” Possberg says there is an indication that the new President and his administration have identified trade as an issue and quite frankly they’ve stated quite bluntly that the Americans have been taken advantage of in many of the trade agreements that are international in scope.

“But we don’t really have an indication of what that means or how they intend to remedy it. So, the next three months, six months, the next year it’s going to be very interesting how this thing all unfolds,” he said.

Possberg says about 20 per cent of all of the pork produced in the U.S. is exported and 95 per cent of the world’s population lives outside of the U.S. so American pork producers certainly don’t want anything to happen that will hinder trade.

“Canadian pork producers are even more dependent on trade with 60 to 70 per cent of the pork produced in Canada sold to foreign markets,” he added.• — By Harry Siemens