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Vilsack comments on USMCA’s Canada dairy ruling
Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack applauds the recent ruling by a USMCA trade dispute panel saying Canada was not living up to the agreement. “We’re now going to have more market opportunity for those fourteen TRQ’s (tariff rate quotas) so where dairy product is going to be sold in Canada, which is obviously good news.”
Vilsack says the theory was the U.S. dairy industry would be allowed to market products to a variety of Canadian purchasers so the tariff rate quota could be met by retail purchases by virtue of wholesale purchases, but instead, the Canadians funneled the contracts and agreements to a handful of potential buyers who either were not interested or could not use the U.S. products covered by these tariff rate quotas. “It was expected and anticipated at the time USMCA was negotiated that this could result in somewhere between two and three-hundred million dollars in additional sales in Canada of dairy products and so hopefully with this ruling, we’ll see that.”
If the Canadians don’t comply with the ruling by Friday, February 3rd, the U.S. can react, which might include retaliatory tariffs on Canadian goods.
