R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard issued a statement regarding reports that President
Trump's trade negotiators may accept a "Skinny NAFTA."
"We urge President Trump to stay at the NAFTA negotiating table until all
the deficiencies in that agreement are corrected. If those deficiencies that
allow Canada and Mexico to maintain persistent and substantial price depressing
trade surpluses cannot be corrected, the United States should withdraw from
NAFTA. No deal is better than a partial deal that continues to drain the
economic strength of the United States' largest agricultural sector - our U.S.
cattle industry," Bullard said..
Under NAFTA, the U.S. imports three times the volume and twice the value that
it exports in cattle and beef, which forced the U.S. to absorb a price
depressing $33 billion deficit during NAFTA's pendency. The value of imports
from Canada and Mexico increased 41 percent from 2012-13 to 2014-15,
contributing to the unprecedented 2015 collapse in U.S. cattle prices.
"It is the swamp, the entrenched agricultural lobby representing
transnational agribusinesses, that is resisting the President's effort to
properly renegotiate NAFTA. The President must not continue kowtowing to those
transnational agribusinesses that have no loyalty whatsoever to America's
farmers and ranchers nor to America's rural communities," said Bullard.
"Before President Trump leaves the NAFTA table, even temporarily, he
should reinstate country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for beef so consumers can
choose to buy American beef. He should revise NAFTA's rules of origin to end
the theft of the American ranchers' trademark - their "Product of the
USA" label, which transnational agribusinesses are now putting on beef
born and raised exclusively in Canada and Mexico. He should include safeguards
to protect American ranchers from price-destroying import surges such as the
one that broke our cattle market in 2015-16. In addition, he should impose
tariffs on cattle and beef from Canada and Mexico so that our American cattle
industry can once again begin attracting young ranchers who are presently shut
out of the ranching business because all the economic opportunities they would
have had over the past 25 years have been fulfilled with undifferentiated
imports."
R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of
America) is the largest producer-only cattle trade association in the United
States. It is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the
continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry.