Agrifood Economic Systems Calls for Quick Decisive Response to U.S. Tariff Threats

The Research Lead with Agrifood Economic Systems suggests Canadian agricultural organizations and government need to come together quickly and act decisively in response to the threat of U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports. Agrifood Economic Systems has released a Policy Advisory Note which examines Canada's one month reprieve on U.S. tariffs and how the agri-food sector should use that time.

Agrifood Economic Systems Research Lead Dr. Al Mussell suggests Canadians are suddenly faced with a generational event.

Quote-Dr. Al Mussell-Agrifood Economic Systems:

Between trade policy, geopolitical tensions and the threats that the new administration has made as well as the social and political upheaval that you can see beginning in the United States, this is the most menacing situation that Canada has faced, certainly since the end of the cold war and probably since the end of the second world war.We have 30 days.30 days is not a lot of time but, for our ag organizations, commodity organizations and government, how do we use that time?

How do we prepare for whatever is going to come in early March? We don't know what it is.We might just get the 25 percent tariffs then.Maybe that was going to happen all along or maybe we'll get a further reprieve or maybe it'll be something different all together but, one way or another, this is not a typical situation.

It's an exceptional situation. I'm 56 years old.My generation has never seen a situation like this.You would have to go back to our grandparent’s generation that lived through the second world war to see the magnitude and rate of change that is coming at us now. We're not being faced by an invading army or something like that but if you look at the kind of damage that this could do to our economy, it has some similar effects so we have to pretty quickly figure out that this is not a normal situation and we need to be prepared to throw extraordinary resources at it and we need to do it very quickly and we need to require it from our government and from our industry associations.

Dr. Mussell says this is an extraordinary situation and we've got a heck of a lot of work to do in a very short period of time.