The Canadian Pork Council is applauding progress on the renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement.
On Monday the United States and Mexico announced a preliminary agreement to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Gary Stordy, the Director of Government and Corporate Affairs with the Canadian Pork Council, says it’s good news that the U,S. and Mexico have worked through some of their concerns and now Canada is able to rejoin the group discussions and hopefully move forward to concluding an agreement.
For the Canadian pork interests ultimately the big objective is a deal that really removes any tariffs and obstacles to trade of pork in their integrated market. When it comes to the trade of pork and from a pork producer’s point of view we want to resume normal trade conditions where we have agreements and there’s not this disruption in the market because, frankly, we’re more competitive together against the global pork industry than we are divided.
Right now we’re dealing with a situation where we are dealing with depressed pork prices compared to what they’ve been in the past. Part of that is an over supply issue but another part is the uncertainty that these trade discussions, trade disputes, retaliatory measures and tariffs have placed on the industry.
We are looking for a resolution to NAFTA so that the discussions can move on to other areas. Canadian pork producers have been working closely with their U.S. counterparts on the same page wanting to see a resolution to this.
~ Gary Stordy, Canadian Pork Council
Stordy notes Canadian and U.S. negotiating teams are meeting this week and the pork sector is looking forward to negotiations wrapping up sooner rather than later to eliminate some of the uncertainty in the markets.
