The U.S. lost its latest challenge against Canadian dairy trade practices, but there may be more of a fight ahead.
U.S. dairy organizations along with elected officials and ag leaders are expressing disappointment over Friday’s decision by the USMCA dispute panel in the challenge against Canada’s dairy trade quotas. The U.S. charged that the quotas don’t line up with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA). Last year, a USMCA panel ruled with the U.S. However, Executive Vice President for Policy Development and Strategy for the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council Jaime Castaneda says that case didn’t solve the problem.
“The problem was that the first case didn’t go far enough to argue that Canada had to actually truly open their market and allow for a number of different players in Canada, who would be able to actually import, like retailers, food distributors, restaurants, pizza chains and so on,” he said.
He says those users should have automatically been included, but since they weren’t specifically named, Canada excluded them and that’s what the U.S. challenged this year. Castaneda says despite this year’s decision going to Canada, there are more steps the U.S. can take. United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she will continue to fight the Canadian policy in a statement issued about the USMCA ruling.
“Despite the conclusions of this report, the United States continues to have serious concerns about how Canada is implementing the dairy market access commitments it made in the Agreement. While the United States won a previous USMCA dispute on Canada’s dairy TRQ allocation measures, Canada’s revised policies have still not fixed the problem for U.S. dairy farmers,” the statement read. “We will continue to work to address this issue with Canada, and we will not hesitate to use all available tools to enforce our trade agreements and ensure that U.S. workers, farmers, manufacturers, and exporters receive the full benefits of the USMCA.”
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also said the work will continue.
“The United States won the first USMCA case on Canada’s dairy TRQ allocation system with the ultimate goal of securing fair market access for U.S. dairy farmers, workers, processors, and exporters. Although we are disappointed in the outcome of this second case, we brought this case to refine and expand upon our win in the first case,” Vilsack said. “We will continue to voice deep concerns about Canada’s system. We remain focused on securing the market access we believe Canada committed to under the USMCA and we will continue exploring all avenues available to achieve that goal.”
