Schumer Tells USTR Canadian Barriers to Dairy Should Be NAFTA Priority
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., visited a dairy cooperative in upstate New York to emphasize his desire that Canadians change their dairy supply management system as part of a NAFTA deal. Schumer, who traveled to Cayuga Milk Ingredients on April 16, said the cooperative lost $30 million in skim milk powder sales the day after Canada's Class 7 system was implemented. He also released a copy of a letter to the U.S. trade representative as part of the publicity around the event. In the letter, he said, "As I have expressed to you many times, I strongly believe that we should not miss this opportunity to protect our dairy producers from Canada’s recent predatory trade practices. ... This Class 7 system is likely a violation of Canada’s World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, but addressing it quickly through NAFTA renegotiation is needed, rather than waiting for years for a WTO determination."
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Protecting the income of Canadian dairy farmers is politically sensitive, just as farmers' interests are a sensitive political matter in the U.S., and Canada has pointed to the dairy supply management issue as one of the sticking points in NAFTA negotiations (see 1710180024).