Western Producer staff
For Canadian farmers trying to figure out Washington’s attitude these days on cross-border issues, the signals are decidedly mixed and hard to read.
The Americans have decided not to re-impose the wheat import cap, mainly because they couldn’t do it under trade law without Canadian consent.
And U.S. agriculture secretary Dan Glickman insisted last week he is not trying to be nasty just to score political points with domestic farm constituents.
“I’m not looking for a fight,” he said, and the words seemed more credible coming from this Kansas politician than they would have from the combative Mississippi politician, Mike Espy, whom he replaced.
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Espy, during his short term as agriculture secretary, seemed to take his trade battles with Canada to heart.
Glickman, for his first face-to-face meeting with Canadian minister Ralph Goodale last week, even made the mile-long trek to the Canadian embassy in Washington, giving up the advantage of his home turf at the U.S. agriculture department complex.
These seem like positive signs for Canada-U.S. relations.
Yet under the surface, there is a less benign current as the U.S. political system careens toward that most political of years – leap year, when the president, one-third of the Senate and all the House of Representatives are up for re-election.
Few issues remain unsullied by the political need to appeal to voters in the run-up to 1996.
So it was with Glickman.
He mixed his conciliatory words with threats that if Canada sends too much grain south, the Americans will find some way to challenge it.
And if there is a way, they will challenge the wheat board’s structure, pricing and selling practices. “We have problems with the (Canadian) wheat board, as with all wheat boards.”
It’s not hard to figure out why conciliatory talk gives way to threats. Glickman must play up to the midwestern farm lobby that is vocal and single-minded in its attack on CWB practices.
To reinforce the point last week, three blocks away from the hotel where Glickman spoke, the U.S. wheat lobby organized a news conference to denounce the wheat board as a world pricing predator that influences what all other world exporters can charge.
This is the latest volley in what U.S. Wheat Associates president Winston Wilson told reporters has been “a running gunbattle” with the Board. And they clearly will keep shooting until the Board has been rendered ineffective.
It is, in part, to this lobby that Glickman must appeal as he walks the tight-rope between being co-operative or competitive.
It is a lobby that will never be satisfied without complete victory, that will watch closely to make sure the administration does not engage in treasonous exchanges with the enemy.
For the next year, Canadian farmers should expect the signals flowing north to remain mixed, from a trade partner with an edge of anger, always looking for a Canadian cause that can be used to play to the voters back home.
