The tone surrounding the negotiations to update NAFTA has taken a gloomy turn, especially for agriculture, with a growing consensus that there's a real chance President Trump will try to follow through on his repeated threats to pull the U.S. out of NAFTA. Even Prime Minister Trudeau, after meeting with Trump on Wednesday, sounded like... Read More
Category: Trade
The first three rounds of the three city touring NAFTA talks have seen many handshakes, a few trials balloons and agreement on predictable texts. Round four will begin back in DC mid-week and is expected to have some more drama and rocky moments as predicted by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland at the outset... Read More
The Canadian pulse industry is still waiting to hear from India's government on how it will handle Canadian pulses shipped after September 30, 2017. The latest in a series of exemptions related to India's fumigation requirement expired at the end of September. "We're sitting here on the 4th of October and we haven't heard from... Read More
After months of very little public activity on the Trans-Pacific Partnership file, the Canadian government says it wants to know what Canadians think about a potential agreement with the remaining TPP members. Global Affairs Canada, in a notice published in the Sept. 30th Canada Gazette, calls for views on a TPP deal with the other... Read More
Negotiators are trying to ignore the politics and noise surrounding their attempt to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the big decisions will ultimately be made in the political realm. And that means what happens on the ground in the negotiating room has to be within the range of what political leaders, including... Read More
Negotiators have made some progress on agriculture-related topics during the third round of NAFTA negotiations in Ottawa this week. A full day of discussions on agriculture took place on Tuesday, with more planned for Wednesday. The U.S. introduced a "consolidated text" for agriculture, compiled from the three countries' individual submissions, according to a source who... Read More
Dairy and supply management have yet to be formally discussed in the renegotiation of NAFTA, with the third round of talks set to wrap up on Wednesday. Canada's chief negotiator, Steve Verheul, indicated over the weekend that he did not expect the U.S. to table any dairy text in Ottawa. That was still the case... Read More
As the NAFTA negotiations enter the third round of talks in Ottawa, the agriculture community in all three countries is nervous. We have heard "do no harm" so many times from famers and ranchers in all three countries that you'd think it should have penetrated into the minds of the negotiating teams. The White House... Read More
The provisional application of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union (EU) officially started this week, which had the Canadian trade team in Brussels actually jumping for joy. But the work is far from over, as technical barriers are holding the agriculture and agri-food industry back from reaching their... Read More
The latest three-month exemption to India's rules requiring fumigation of pulse crops is nearing its expiration date, and Canadians are no nearer to an understanding of what, exactly, that might mean. "As of today, we don't know what India's policy is going to be for bills of lading that are dated October 1 or later,... Read More