A trade negotiation strategy is emerging from Canada’s supply-managed sectors. It is simple: deflect attention from supply management’s instrument of choice, tariffs, to focus trade liberalization goals on emerging non-tariff barriers.
Last week at a Red Deer trade conference, supply-management leaders said tariffs are yesterday’s trade issue. Canada should not feel “guilty” going to Geneva talks with a position that includes defending high dairy and poultry tariffs.
Both those sectors adhere to minimum import access requirements and besides, tariffs are transparent.
A more insidious development is use of environmental, health, sanitary or other regulations to block trade.
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Chicken Farmers of Canada chair John Kolk said non-tariff barriers are a “Pandora’s box” which should concern negotiators far more than tariffs.
It is an argument which plays to supply management’s strengths. But the conference provided evidence enough that it will be a tough sell, despite Ottawa’s promise that Canada’s trade negotiating policy will reflect the diverse interests in the country.
Heading into the next World Trade Organization talks, supply management protections clearly are under attack internationally and domestically.
At the talks, tariff reductions will be a primary goal of many negotiators, led by the United States but also including the Cairns Group of 14 middle-sized exporters.
There also is domestic hostility from some export sectors and assorted free trade theologians who consider free trade the “moral high ground.” They believe any Canadian attempt to defend high tariffs will be a waste of political capital and an embarrassment for a trading nation.
Several anti-supply-management strategies were clear last week at a conference heavily weighted to the export side of the trade equation. It gave the supply management leaders a glimpse of their first hurdle – getting past domestic critics.
First, the Alberta Agri-Industry Trade Group which organized the conference told the conference that eastern and western marketing boards do not see eye to eye: “Supply management organizations in eastern and western Canada have different agendas and this lack of unity interferes with the type of trade development that dairy and poultry industries in the west are seeking.”
Then, less publicly but just as evident in the halls, there was an attempt to separate Canadian Wheat Board single-desk selling advocates from supply management.
The argument is that the Americans are gunning for both state trading entities and supply-management tariffs. CWB supporters should not tie their hopes to supply management “orderly marketing,” since both may not be saved.
And finally, there is the argument of inevitability. Once border controls were converted to diminishing tariffs, the end of supply management became inevitable so why spend time now making compromises for a system that is doomed?
These are the domestic arguments supply-management advocates will have to counter during the next 12 months.
They have their work cut out for them.
