In joint comments to the U.S. trade representative’s office, two U.S. dairy groups said they will work with the Trump administration to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement in hopes of gaining wider access to the Canadian market. Since NAFTA was signed, the United States has evolved from a net importer of dairy products to a large exporter.
“NAFTA has accomplished a great deal over the past two-plus decades, but it has also been overtaken by new, unanticipated forms of trade and trade problems,” said Tom Vilsack, chief executive of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. “Our industry looks forward to working with the Trump administration to explore ways to preserve and strengthen it.”
The National Milk Producers Federation said that NAFTA negotiations should assure continued open trade with Mexico, which, with purchases worth $1.2 billion last year, is the No. 1 market for U.S. dairy exports. That’s double the size of sales to Canada, the No. 2 dairy export market. In a release, the two U.S. dairy groups complained of “increasingly protectionist dairy policies by Canada.”
President Trump recently waded into the latest of the disputes—Canada’s creation of a dairy price policy to encourage the use of domestically produced ultra-filtered milk rather than U.S. imports.