The agricultural industries in the U.S., Canada and Mexico on Wednesday jointly urged the negotiators for the North American Free Trade Agreement to make as few changes as possible to the trade deal, warning that any change could severely disrupt the economies of all three nations.
In a public letter, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, and Mexico’s National Agricultural Council said their industries are integrated as a result of the 1993 trade deal, which has greatly improved efficiency. The letter was addressed to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and his counterparts in Mexico, Secretary of the Economy Ildefonso Villarreal, and in Canada, Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland. The three began the first round of talks to renegotiate NAFTA on Wednesday.
“Agriculture in each NAFTA country would suffer greatly from disruptions to the trading relationships that have developed over the last 23 years. With the productivity of agriculture growing faster than domestic demand, Canadian, Mexican and U.S. farmers and ranchers rely on export markets to sustain prices and revenues,” the letter said.
The letter noted that “each country may have specific issues it would like to see addressed” but warned that “we should not allow these issues to undermine the overall success of our trading relationship.”
Among business groups, the agricultural industry is arguably the sector most supportive of NAFTA. The lobbying to reopen the deal has come mainly from manufacturers. Nevertheless, some the key issues on the table involve agricultural disputes between the U.S. and Canada.
U.S. industries, especially dairy and poultry, have long sought the end of Canada’s tariffs on both of those products. Domestic timber industries have also long complained that Canada’s policies unfairly benefit its loggers, too. The failed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would have expanded U.S. access to those markets without completely removing the barriers. The TPP deal is widely expected to be a blueprint for the NAFTA renegotiations.
On Wednesday, Lighthizer said a U.S. goal was to “assure that there is equal access and reciprocity in government procurement and agriculture.”
Canada signaled Monday that it would not give much, if any, ground on the benefits it provides to its industries. “Canada will uphold and preserve the elements in NAFTA that Canadians deem key to our national interest – including a process to ensure anti-dumping and countervailing duties are only applied fairly when truly warranted,” Freeland said in a speech Monday at the University of Ottawa.
President Trump has often railed against the Canadian policies. It was apparently the president’s anger over barriers faced by the U.S. dairy industry that prompted his short-lived plan in April to pull out of NAFTA. He had tweeted about the farmers numerous times in the week leading up to it.
