Only days away from a meeting of trade ministers to try to wrap up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, Canada and the United States are at odds over access to Canada’s dairy and poultry market. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack likened the situation to the final stages of harvest. Negotiators are “getting down to the short rows,” he told reporters. “They are very significant issues.”
Canada “says it will not be bullied as the United States rachets up pressure on Canada’s heavily protected dairy sector,” said the Toronto Globe and Mail, surveying the dispute ahead of the TPP meeting in Hawaii. “The timing of the talks is bad for the Conservative government, which heads to the polls in October.”
“The U.S. dairy lobby expects major new access to Canadian markets as part of any TPP deal,” says the Globe and Mail. It has not stated in public what it wants but a dairy official told the newspaper the industry expects more than what Canada gave the European Union in a 2014 trade agreement – the right to import an additional 17,700 tonnes of cheese without paying high tariffs. Canada sets tariffs as high as 300 percent on imports to protect domestic dairy and poultry farmers from competition.