The Chair of Manitoba Pork says, in the event the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement collapses, Canada will be in a strong position to move forward with trade deals with individual countries.
In October 2015 the 12 nations involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership reached an agreement in principal, however the stand taken on trade by incoming U.S. President Donald Trump’s Administration has cast doubt on the future of that agreement.
The Donald Trump Presidency and Trade were discussed this week as a delegation representing Manitoba Pork took part in the Minnesota Pork Congress in Minneapolis.
George Matheson, the Chair of Manitoba Pork, acknowledges the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not look promising.
When it was first brought forward a couple of years ago of course agriculture was very excited. We could see the benefits but there are a lot of industries as well as agriculture that are involved and it does not look overly promising right now that it will go forward in the near future.
A lot could just be just rhetoric from the U.S. presidential campaign where Donald Trump has stated that he’s going to look more closely at trade deals and make sure they’re advantageous to the United States. But, if that falls through, there will always be trade between singular counties.
We would have preferred it to be multilateral but if it’s unilateral we still have a great relationship with Japan and continue to work on other markets. Vietnam looks very promising, China of course is bottomless as far as opportunities go and there’s always Mexico so it’s not like trade will stop continually. But the deal that we thought would be best for everyone does not look promising at this time.
~ George Matheson, Manitoba Pork
Representatives of Manitoba Pork will attend the Iowa Pork Congress next week.
