Trump suspends trade negotiations with Canada
President Trump announced an immediate suspension of trade negotiations with Canada after a television ad aired opposing U.S. tariffs. The ad, which ran in Canada, quoted former President Ronald Reagan in a 1987 speech where he said, “trade barriers hurt every American worker.”
Ethan Lane, National Cattlemen’s Association senior vice president of Government Affairs, said details are still emerging about the suspension and the effect it will have on the cattle industry, still reeling from other announcements this week.
“The U.S. cattle industry has a lot of supply chains that snake back and forth like other industries across those borders,” he said. “A lot of eastern calves go north to Canada to feed out — about 4 or 500,000 a year — and then come back down to the U.S. to be processed. The Pacific Northwest has a robust trade back and forth as well, so that’s something that’s going to weigh heavily moving forward as we start trending more toward what is going to prove to be unsure and incredibly contentious USMCA [United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement] negotiation both with Canada and Mexico in the near future.”
Lane said the trade negotiation suspension comes on the heels of the president saying the cattle industry “ought to take less money for our product” and his subsequent quadrupling of the quota on Argentine beef, neither of which sat well with cattle producers.
Agriculture Economist David Kohl, recently drew some similarities between the current agriculture economy and the farm crisis of the 1980s. Kohl said the closures of export markets and low commodity prices are reminiscent of the crisis years. The difference, according to Brian Duncan, Illinois Farm Bureau president, is the interest rate level and the availability of risk management tools now available.
TRYING TIMES
Lane said the timing of both the suspension of trade talks with Canada and the president’s quadrupling of quotas on imported Argentine beef come at a terrible time for cattle producers. He said he doesn’t get the sense this week that historical price movements in the agricultural commodities are something (Trump) has spent a lot of time studying.”
Lane did say the plan rolled out by U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, and the White House for fortification of the beef industry is filled with items NCBA has supported.
“These are things cattle producers have long worked on and advocated for since, in some cases, before President Trump’s first term, things we asked President Trump for in his first term,” Lane said. “These are things we worked on with the Biden administration, to very little success, to achieve and these are things we outlined for the president at the beginning of this term.”
He said he’s excited the administration is leaning into some of the priorities.
“This is where we feel their time can best be spent, get the federal government out of our business,” he said. “And that I think is the split reaction you’re seeing from cattle producers around the country this week is on one hand, that is the list, go do those things and you will make lives better for cattle producers around the country. Meddle in the free market and try to employ any kind of market-altering policy that gets in the way of those critical signals we need from the consumer down through the supply chain, and you will see a different side of the U.S. cattle industry.”
Lane said NCBA members across the country have made their voices heard this week, sending 40,000 letters to Capitol Hill and the White House.
