opinion
The continued U.S. complaints and threats about the Canadian Wheat Board are more than merely ignorant and unfair. They are pathetic. The once-proud United States of America – the nation that led the way in winning the last world war, rebuilding postwar Europe, winning the space race and winning the Cold War – now appears to be ruled by a motley collection of whiners and bullies.
Because the muddled U.S. agricultural system cannot compete well in grain exports, their government officials and agribusiness lobbyists complain that the Canadian Wheat Board must be doing something unfair. And they threaten trade-subsidy retaliation.
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Ironically, over the past 10 years, in spite of the billions of dollars the U.S. has thrown into wheat export subsidies, their share of world wheat trade has declined from 37.3 percent in 1984-85 to 35.7 percent in 1993-94. (In the same period, Canada’s share rose from 17.2 to 20.8.)
Canada’s strong performance didn’t come because of any significant export subsidies – with rare exceptions, the wheat board is completely farmer-financed, as the board’s annual report proves. Western Canadian farmers last year even paid $585,629, through wheat board administrative expenses, for consultants’ fees required by the U.S. International Trade Commission’s investigation and hearings concerning U.S. durum imports. (The actual cost to Canadian farmers of that witch hunt, inspired by parochial U.S. politicians, would in addition include the cost of having board staff travel to the hearings to defend farmer interests.)
The expenses that the ITC case inflicted on Canadian farmers, however, were tiny compared with their losses because of price-depressing U.S. export subsidies.
To be sure, the wheat board benefits from Canadian government credit guarantees, but the U.S. government also provides credit guarantees (or often outright grants) to enable other countries to buy its grain.
There’s no sneaky trick involved in the wheat board’s success. If the U.S. government and grain trade want to compete effectively, they too can put in the hard work necessary to provide co-operative quality assurance, co-operative transportation efficiency, and co-operative market development. In short, they could devote themselves to customer satisfaction rather than bullying threats against competitors.
But it’s easier for politicians, self-serving officials and special-interest lobbyists to create a foreign bogeyman to blame all their troubles on.
Former U.S. statesmen like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman would be disgusted at the banana-republic antics of their successors today.
