The Canadian hog industry’s champion found himself facing an odd foe in Washington, D.C., March 8.
Instead of a rival wielding a pile of documents and research, the United States National Pork Producers Council put forward a paper of less than 50 pages.
“If one of your children had written this in school, you’d probably give them a D, a D for dishonest and just plain dumb,” said Ted Muir, a Manitoba Pork Council trade expert and former general manager.
He told the Prairie Swine Centre’s Focus on the Future conference that “the (U.S.)National Pork Producers Council, for some really unknown reason, really hasn’t presented a solid argument to the International Trade Commission proving to them that the (Canadian) exports going to the United States are injuring the U.S. industry.”
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On March 7, the U.S. Department of Commerce reduced, but made permanent, an import tariff on live Canadian hogs.
The department ruling said there was reason to believe Canadian hogs were sometimes sold beneath fair market value, so a tariff of 10.63 percent applies to most Canadian pigs shipped into the U.S.
It is a major blow for Manitoba’s hog industry because about half of all pigs born in the province are shipped to American buyers. Most go to Iowa and Minnesota feeder barn operators who buy early-weaned Manitoba pigs.
About half of all market hogs exported from Canada to the U.S. come from Manitoba, as do more than half of all weanlings exported. U.S. buyers provide one-third of the money made by Manitoba hog producers, or $257 million of the $777 million industry.
The U.S. Department of Commerce ruled against imposing a countervailing duty on Canadian pig imports because it determined that any subsidies received by the Canadian industry were either legal or too small to be penalized.
The U.S. International Trade Commission has the job of determining whether Canadian pigs sold in the U.S. have “injured” the American industry.
If it decides that the American hog industry has been injured by Canadian imports, which the Department of Commerce has determined are being dumped into the market, it will likely make the import tariff permanent.
A negative decision can be reviewed after one year and again after five years.
If the ITC decides the U.S. industry has not been injured by the Canadian imports, it will likely eliminate the tariff.
The commission is scheduled to announce a ruling April 6.
Muir said U.S. trade laws are heavily weighted in favour of U.S. interests. But Canada’s case is “about as good a case as you could think up,” Muir said. If any Canadian industry can win a fight at the ITC, it will be the hog industry.
“We’re very confident that we’ve got a strong case, but it is not a slam dunk,” said Muir.
Winning the case at the ITC will not end the fighting over pigs and pork. The U.S. interests that have propelled this dispute, which include giant corporate hog barn owners such as Smithfield Foods, see biased U.S. trade laws as one of their long-term tools, Muir said.
“They want to get rid of the independent (American) producer and cut down the amount of pork that is coming out of Canada,” said Muir.
If the American industry can manage to win the fight against Canadian live pigs, it will probably move next to attack Canadian pork shipments, Muir said.
