Progress in Tariff Discussions Cause for Renewed Confidence

A partner with Polar Pork is hopeful recent progress in trade discussions involving Canada, the U.S. and Mexico and the U.S. and its other trading partners, particularly China, will result in a more positive economic environment down the road than we've seen so far this year. U.S. President Donald Trump's threatened imposition of tariffs, first on Canada the U.S. and Mexico and then on 75 of its other trading partners, including China, has resulted in considerable economic uncertainty.

Florian Possberg, a partner with Polar Pork, says the initial concern when the tariff issue started to bubble to the surface back in March, was that there was going to be very significant tariffs on Canadian and Mexican trade with the United States and that was going to be very disruptive.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork:

As things moved along, there was one delay and then there was a second delay and, at the end of the day, not very many things really changed in pork trade or other meats for than matter. There is some doubt on whether new surprises will rise the forefront but so far so good.And then the second thing was really the disruption between China and the United States and the huge tariffs there.The heat has been turned down as of Monday with a 90-day agreement between China and the United States.

That being said though, Canada still has a 25 percent tariff placed by China on Canada so that's still a problem for our Canadian industry but the big concern was Canada, Mexico and the United States and it's a big relief that that seems to be operating more or less normally.

Possberg says we take it one day at a time because there's been a lot of things thrown our way but hopefully things will become much more clear and the economic environment that we face will be much more positive than it has been so far this year.