U.S. industry groups, labour, comment on Canada's entry to Trans-Pacific Partnership

U.S. industry groups, including the main poultry and dairy associations, complained about Canada's supply management policies and intellectual property regime during a Monday hearing at the United States Trade Representative on Canada's entry to the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. Meanwhile, in its presentation to the USTR, the AFL-CIO urged the U.S. government to incorporate "a new approach to trade policy, one that prioritizes benefits for working families, not simply benefits for multi-national or global enterprises (MNEs)."

Reuters reported Monday that the U.S. dairy and chicken sectors are sore they never received access to Canada's market as promised in NAFTA. High tariff walls and low quotas prevent exports of these goods from any country from flooding the Canadian market, which is supplied mainly by Canadian farmers and farm production.

"All we're asking is that we have an open and free fair trade shot at the border," Bill Roenigk, senior vice president at the National Chicken Council, told the USTR. "The U.S. poultry industry strongly opposes Canada's participation in the TPP unless Canada expressly commits to removing all border restrictions on poultry imports from the United States."

Jaime Castaneda, senior vice president at the National Milk Producers Federation, told the same meeting he thinks the United States must seize this opportunity to "finally negotiate an opening of the Canadian dairy market to all U.S. dairy products without restriction," according to Reuters.

These complaints are not new, quite the opposite. The USTR's annual report on foreign trade barriers to U.S. exports consistently lists supply management as an irritant with Canada. They also list dairy-related regulations in Canada which, god forbid, "limit the ingredients that can be used in cheese-making, set a minimum for raw milk in the cheese-making process, and make cheese importers more accountable for ensuring that imported product is in full compliance."

Imagine having a minimum requirement for milk content in cheese. What are we thinking?

Other Canadian irritants listed in the 2012 USTR report, which will certainly come up in TPP negotiations, include: provincial liquor board policies favouring local wines, subsidies for Canada's aerospace sector, local content quotas for solar and wind projects in Ontario's Green Energy Act, Canadian copyright and pharmaceutical patent regimes, foreign ownership caps in the telecommunications sector, Canadian content requirements for radio and television broadcasting (and other cultural policies), privacy laws in B.C. and Nova Scotia that limit what personal information can be shared across borders, and procurement by Crown corporations, which wasn't included in the Canada-U.S. Agreement on Government Procurement.

September 29, 2012

Source: rabble.ca