Farmscape for January 26, 2017

The Canadian Meat Council is hopeful a renegotiation of NAFTA will maintain or even improve the climate for agricultural trade between Canada and the United States.
On Monday U.S. President Donald Trump honored an election campaign commitment and signed an executive order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement and he indicated he intends to immediately begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Ron Davidson, the Director of International Trade, Government and Media Relations with Canadian Meat Council, says, in the case of NAFTA, although the loss of the TPP is regrettable, the hope is that it will not affect bilateral trade with the United States or with other countries in the TPP.

Clip-Ron Davidson-Canadian Meat Council:
We are hopeful that, given the mutual advantage in the meat sector that what ever should happen in the NAFTA context will not have any negative effect on the meat sector and perhaps could even further facilitate trade between our two countries.
My understanding is that Canada is a net importer of agri-food products from the United States so certainly there is no trade imbalance.
In the case of the meat sector Canada and the United States livestock and meat sectors are very integrated and both  countries gain advantage from having the integrated globally competitive meat sector.
We are very important markets for each other in the meat sector and in the livestock sector significant volumes of livestock go to the United States and create jobs in the U.S. so they're certainly gaining jobs from the integrated North American livestock and meat sector.
We are hopeful, so that we can remove uncertainty, that the negotiations will move ahead quickly and, as I say, as far as the meat sector goes in particular, the status quo or even an improved bilateral arrangement will result.

Davidson says, in this case, the facts are such that we hopefully can maintain the status quo or even improve the situation.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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