When Irish eyes were smiling, Canada-United States trade went a lot better, according to U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s former agriculture secretary.
“Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan were good friends. They worked together to deal with whatever problems might arise,” said John Block, who became Reagan’s first secretary of agriculture in 1980.
“Today it seems a lot of things have come together at once. We’ve got to get over the hump on this thing. It’s eating our lunch right now.”
Block, who was in Winnipeg April 5 to attend the Manitoba Pork Council’s annual meeting, said Canadian and American political leaders need to resolve trade frictions before special interest groups create international trade disputes that hurt both countries.
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“I think the leaders of the countries, the president and the prime minister, need to start standing shoulder to shoulder and say, ‘we’ve got to work together on things.’ Send a message to the people that we want to minimize our problems and differences.”
Block supported Canada’s fight against U.S. duties on imports of Canadian hogs and said that a Canadian win would push hog trade actions onto the back burner.
But he said trade disputes between the two countries will continue and free trade supporters need to get more committed if they want the situation to improve.
“These things never end, and I think we have to keep working on it to just acknowledge that in the end it is better to let producers and farmers and people do what they are good at doing and not do something someone else is better at doing,” said Block.
“I don’t raise pineapples and bananas on my farm in Illinois. I’m going to do what I’m good at: corn and pigs.”
The United States is not free of the damaging disputes that are sapping the strength of Canadian agriculture. BSE has closed the borders of most of the world’s countries to U.S. beef, and the U.S. has long-running disputes with its other North American Free Trade Agreement partner Mexico on a number of commodities, including high-fructose corn syrup.
“Countries all over the world have a tendency towards protectionism,” said Block.
His stance in favour of the Canadian hog industry in the recent dispute has earned him some hard stares from American producers, he conceded, but his long history as a champion of the American farmer has given his arguments credibility.
“I’m a trader and I want to keep trading and I don’t like trade disputes,” said Block.
He ended the U.S. wheat embargo against the Soviet Union despite opposition from the U.S. defence and state departments and helped launch the U.S. attack on European export subsidies in 1983.
He thinks the recent European Union-Canadian decision to hit American products with punitive damages because of the Byrd amendment is good and may be effective. The U.S. law provides money from duties to American companies.
“Some of these (U.S.) politicians just need to be hit up the side of the head to get them to acknowledge that we’ve got something there that’s really bad,” said Block. “I think it’ll help.”
But nothing will work like getting each country’s leader to make it clear that trade co-operation is a national priority.
“We have to have an indication from the leadership, the president and the prime minister, that that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a rebirth of freer, open trade,” said Block.
