OTTAWA (Staff) — Some Canadian players and observers of the Canada-United States agricultural trade dispute were taking quiet comfort last week in the apparent White House rebuke of U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy.
After Espy tried to draw Brazil, Mexico and Argentina into his anti-Canadian Wheat Board campaign, U.S. Ambassador to Canada James Blanchard issued a rebuke.
“I don’t think he had authority from the president,” said Blanchard, a close friend of U.S. president Bill Clinton. “And I don’t agree with him.”
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Canadian officials said they thought the rebuke was unprecedented. There was a quiet assumption in Ottawa that the White House was signalling Espy has gone too far and that a settlement is possible.
“From a Canadian perspective, I was delighted with the comments,” said agriculture minister Ralph Goodale. “I am definitely of the view that the secretary had gone too far.”
There was speculation that Espy, a former congressman from Mississippi, might soon leave Clinton’s cabinet to announce he is running to become governor of Mississippi.
Espy seen as loose cannon
From his vantage point as a Canadian economist and farmer with a job teaching agricultural economics in California, Andy Schmitz said that Espy is seen as something of a loose cannon, more anxious to please congress, industry lobbyists and the big grain companies than to follow the administration’s policy of promoting freer trade and good relations with Canada.
“It’s a mystery what’s gotten hold of the guy,” he said from California.
“I would take the ambassador’s words as a strong, maybe unprecedented, rebuke of a cabinet minister. It has to be signalling a shifting strategy.”
