BUFFALO, NY - Dairy farming is among the leading industries in Western New York. Traditionally, Canada had been a leading destination for the many goods produced here.
But tariffs on U.S. Dairy products heading to Canada caused President Trump to speak out and now the issue has emerged as a top dispute between the two trading partners.
“This is Donald Trump the negotiator at his best, where people realize they’re not gonna push him around," said WNY Congressman Chris Collins, when weighing in on the latest dispute involving Canadian dairy tariffs,
“In the case of Canada, they totally protect their dairy industry," Collins said.
The New York Farm Bureau agrees with that assessment.
“The way that they have a supply management system and a pricing system essentially prices a lot of our products out of their market, which essentially means we can't sell it," said Steve Ammerman,
Manager of Public Affairs and Associate Director of the Farm Bureau.
Conflict over dairy tariffs escalated long before the President’s most recent remarks, primarily when
Canada began putting tariffs on ultra-filtered milk. Sometimes processed as a powder used to make cheese and energy drinks, it was developed after the original NAFTA treaty was enacted, and thus heretofore, had not been subject to high dairy tariffs.
“It takes a lot of milk to produce it,” said Ammerman. “And that was a good avenue of our milk to go to, in order to keep prices up. Then last year Canada changed their dairy policy that virtually shut out our products from entering the market and our processors were losing tens of millions of dollars."
Canada’s policy not only was rebuked by President Trump, but by democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“The President understand the dairy farmers are hurting right now. He gets it,” said Ammerman. “The typical dairy farmer is probably not thinking about intricate trade policy as they’re milking the cows, but they certainly are thinking about the price of milk. And trade impacts the price of that milk.”
At the same time, however, farmers don’t relish the thought of a full scale trade war, where a tax on one product by one side, just leads to another on another product by the other side.
“Nobody is going to win if a trade war escalates," said Ammerman, noting the number of other agricultural products that could be impacted by such a scenario, and how they could be used as bargaining chips by one government or the other.
“When these situation happen, food and farm products tend to be easy targets because they
know that's gonna hurt. And it will hurt," he said.
It's not an easy to solve in part because, through its tariffs, Canada - while making dairy products more expensive for its residents - is simply doing what the U.S. says it seeks to do, which is to protect the livelihood of its dairy farmers.