Federal Leadership Encouraged to Engage with American and Chinese Leaders to Resolve Trade Issues

The General Manager of Sask Pork is calling on Canada's federal leaders to continue to engage with their counterparts in the U.S. and China in hopes of addressing international trade concerns. On April 2'nd U.S. President Donald Trump slapped reciprocal import tariffs on products from 75 of its trading partners, excluding Canada and Mexico, ranging from 10 to 50 percent.

Saskatchewan Pork Development Board General Manager Mark Ferguson says import tariffs, by nature, make products more expensive in the importing country and hurt consumers so, whether its America or China using them, it hurts jobs and business by making inputs more expensive.

Clip-Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:

The U.S. is our largest market for pork today with about 1.8 billion dollars in pork products sent there.But it's also important to understand we also imported 1.4 billion dollars in pork from the U.S. so this is a very important two-way trade flow and tariffs and having them in place and having markets not be there, it's just as important to the U.S. economy is it is Canada's.

On the issue of China, because we currently have Chinese tariffs in place on pork and right now China is our third largest export market.That's behind the U.S. and Japan.We send about half a billion dollars in pork to China and these tariffs are actually in place today and that is an issue of great concern for the industry.

We need to continue to see our leaders, particularly at the federal level continue to engage leadership in both the U.S. and China and negotiate a resolution to these trade issues.We've seen some positive signs here with the U.S.But I think, particularly with China, there's a need to open communications and get back to the bargaining table and negotiate an end to Chinese tariffs.

Ferguson says it's too early to know how Tuesday's tariff announcement will affect global trade dynamics but, as of today, it appears we do not have tariffs on Canadian pork or live animals going into the U.S. and negotiators are still at the table working to deescalate the situation so we're in a period of cautions optimism.