The Director of Risk Management with h@ms Marketing Services says the latest developments on the international trade front come as good news for Canadian pork producers.
The past couple of months have seen the successful conclusion of the United States-Mexico Canada trade negotiations and Canada’s ratification of the CPTPP.
Tyler Fulton, the Director of Risk Management with h@ms Marketing Services, says these developments are encouraging.
We seem to have reached tipping point a little bit with respect to positive trade news, in particular with the USMCA agreement being signed. That still hasn’t factored into markets yet. The hope is that we will get a resolution to the steel and aluminum tariffs which would see the Mexicans lift their tariff on U.S. pork which has had a material difference to market prices in the last five months or so.
I think we are still a long ways off from getting any kind of resolution with China. It seems as though there’s a pretty big gap even though it’s encouraging that President Trump and the Chinese President are expected to meet later on this week.
Lastly the signing of the CPTPP agreement is great news for Canadian producers, in particular into Japan. That will cement a matching of the advantage that the EU producers had signed in a bilateral agreement with Japan and will be a significant advantage over U.S. producers in terms of their percentage of tariff that will be applied.
~ Tyler Fulton, h@ms Marketing Services
Fulton says, if nothing changes, Canadian producers will be advantaged in that market but he suspects that will likely be short lived.
