The dust has settled after the fanfare of trade negotiators moving on from NAFTA 2.0 and giving us the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, a new, trilateral trade agreement that moves now to ratification within each of the three signatories.
Now, nearly a month out from the announcement, Canadians have sifted through news coverage and nearly half have come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a great deal for Canada. Angus Reid Institute recently released its findings of how Canadians view our country’s negotiation performance and this deal, and a full 45 per cent are ‘disappointed or very disappointed’ with the new trade agreement.
For Canadian agriculture, perhaps the most reasonable, best-case scenario was what we got — there are no big gains in USMCA over what was already enshrined in NAFTA, but a deal vs. no-deal is great news for export-dependent commodities.
There are, without a doubt, losers in this new deal — Canada’s supply managed sectors gave up domestic market share and dairy will have to shut down its Class 6 and 7 milk component pricing categories.
Where do you stand? Do you think USMCA is positive or negative for Canadian agriculture?
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