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Obama's Trade Deal Will Bankrupt Canada's Farming Industry "Overnight", Expert Says
Earlier this month, in “Forget China: This Extremely "Developed" Country Just Suffered Its Biggest Money Outflow Ever,” we took a close look at Canada, where slumping crude prices are beginning to take a serious toll. As we noted, citing BofAML, Canada’s basic balance - a combination of the capital and the current account: a measure of national accounts that spans everything from trade to financial-market flows - swung from a surplus of 4.2% of GDP to a deficit of 7.9% in the 12 months ending in June. That’s the fastest one-year deterioration among 10 major developed nations.
Citing Sharma's data Bloomberg wrote that "money is flooding out of Canada at the fastest pace in the developed world as the nation’s decade-long oil boom comes to an end and little else looks ready to take the industry’s place as an economic driver." In fact, based on the chart below, the outflow is the fastest on record.
Well now, on the heels of the Obama administration's rejection of the "dangerous" Keystone Pipeline (which comes as oil tankers continue to derail across the country), some critics say The White House's controversial new trade deal could end up costing beleaguered Canada massive job along with the "overnight" collapse of their agriculture industry. Here's more, from Sputnik:
There are also major concerns over the effects the trade deal will have on Canadian agriculture industries.
Dr Sylvain Charlebois, professor of distribution and food policy at the University of Guelph's Food Institute in Canada, told Sputnik there were many unanswered questions in the deal.
"I think overall, reading the deal, there are some very strong elements to support Canada's membership into this partnership. However, there are a lot of unknowns unfortunately, particularly in the area of agriculture."
Dr Charlebois said that Canada's protectionist supply management scheme, which works to protect local industries, would be thrown out under the TPP, with concerns over how this would impact local producers.
"Canada has supply management, particularly with poultry, milk and eggs, so we basically produce what we need in Canada. Now the Trans-Pacific Partnership would compromise the equilibrium we have between supply and demand domestically […] allowing milk from other member countries to come into the Canadian market."
"What would happen to quotas for example? But most importantly, what would happen to processing? So there's lots of questions being asked by farmers and processors, and now with the changing government, hopefully we'll get some clarity on these issues."
Charlebois goes on to say that the dairy, egg, and poultry sectors may indeed collapse "overnight":
The supply management scheme has been in place since the mid-60s in order to protect Canadian agricultural sectors from larger US corporations.
As a result, Dr Charlebois says the local industries have become complacent and inefficient, and would not be able to survive under the TPP if it was implemented immediately. "Overnight if we were to eliminate tariffs on imports, we would likely see the dairy sector in Canada, and perhaps the poultry and egg sectors, collapse overnight.
"We're just not competitive so we need to give it some time for these sectors to adapt and change their modus operandi to make sure they do become more productive and efficient over the next 15 years or so."
So, with Canada already stinging from plunging crude, some are now suggesting that TPP could be set to cripple the country's economy even further. Meanwhile, Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of BlackBerry - which is of course “dominating” the global smartphone market - thinks this is the “worst thing Canada has ever done":
“I’m not a partisan actor, but I actually think this is the worst thing that the Harper government has done for Canada… I think in 10 years from now, we’ll call that the signature worst thing in policy that Canada’s ever done. It’s such brilliantly systemic encirclement.
I’m just in awe at its powerful purity by the Americans… We’ve been outfoxed.”
Yeah ok, maybe, but let's just be honest, the Obama administration has never "outfoxed" anyone on anything. In fact, if recent geopolitical outcomes have taught us anything, Obama and Kerry couldn't "outfox" their way out of a wet paper bag, so to the extent they've designed some kind of cunning trade policy with the aim of bankrupting the Canadian dairy industry it would out of character, but again, stupidity sometimes produces unpredictable outcomes.
Anyway, incompetence and naïvety do have a way of creating unexpected consequences so we hope, for Canada's sake, that the The White House doesn't end up bankrupting everything chicken-related north of the border but if it does, don't worry, because that same incompetence will invariably end up starting a world war in Syria which will swiftly drive crude prices through the roof and then it's problem solved for the Canadians...
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Canada is too cold .... unsuitable for efficient egg and milk production .... stick to mining, oil and forest products .... like maple syrup ?
Keep this narrative going - it will keep the migrants out of Canada. Go up there and freeze to death. No fruit or vegetables to pick. No welfare or free health care either.
You all want to go to SoCal and live on the beaches.
No Muslims for you .... nor Sweden ?
I'm in Canada, most of the people here are pretty good, except the assholes who infest Toronto, they are all rainbow flag waving feminist commie nazi's.
If this means Toronto will go broke and they all starve I'm all for it. Maybe I'll buy up a farm for pennies on the dollar and sit back as they sit around crying that food is a human right.
Go buy your farm.
When all them Torontonians get hungry they'll likely pay you a visit.
Don't care if you have guns, if you have a big enough area to feed a family year-round, you have a perimeter too big to defend.
Better to learn to hunt and keep moving.
I see you've never been to Toronto.
People from Toronto, in particular the recent immigrants are cpmpletely lost outside the city. If their car broke down at night on a country road, they would not have a clue.
I don't known where the commentator got his information from regarding theTPP as it relates to dairy products in Canada, however as Canadians we were informed that the quota system will remain in place. The terms of the TPP allowed an additional 3.5% of market share to( be opened to international competition , in addition to an existing 10 % for a total of 13.5. % Dairy farmers are to be compensated for a total of( 4.2 billion dollars over 10 years. It does not appear, at least to me , that this is any doomsday scenario for Canadian dairy producers, with 86.5 % of: their market still protected from foreign competition.
And you got this information from . . . ? The Canadian government, or the vested interests pushing the deal? And you believe them?
I to that information from the text of the agreement, which was recently published. There will be no wholesale deconstruction of the dairy supply management system in Canada. The fear mongering article is misinformed.
The article is bullshit fear mongering.
The quota system currently in place in Canada is not being dismantled.
Bovine growth hormone is banned in Canadian milk. That excludes imports of US and many other coutries milk.
The TPP will open up to 3.5% of its market over the next 15 years, primarily cheese.
The Canadian government is spending over $4B in direct subsidies to dairy farmers over that 15 years to offset the cost.
correction, the poor Canadian taxpayer is spending, unvoluntarily, over $4B
So the Canadian taxpayer gets to fund the transfer of Canadian jobs overseas. Whooppee!
And about that bovine growth hormone ban, the ISDS process will dismantle it if there are big dollars to be made by US companies.
Don't like GMO milk? Fuck you! pay us. ---US dairy farmers
While it may be true "the Obama administration has never "outfoxed" anyone on anything", the TPP was written by lobbyists for their big company clients. Obama is the president presiding over the disaster and using the political system to enable it, to the detriment of ordinary citizens in all the signatory countries, including the US and Canada.
It is so cold in Canada .... we used to freeze eggs on the side walk ?
Commercial sized farms have had tons-O-money for decades now and they are wealthy farmers with all new equipment. Everyone beow a commercial sized farm was doing well until 2008, and the crash. Real Estate has tanked BIG time, and farms galore are up for sale dirt friggin' cheap. CANADA is in a protracted Greater Depression, and TPP will kill us off at an even greater rate. The Mafia factions live high on the hog in CANADA, but everyone else is financially fucked fifty ways to Sunday.
People in CANADA don't give a shit what anyone in the USA does to Canadians anymore because we have all see it all of our lives. Americans fucked us collectively with NAFTA, and now that NAFTA has run a course of usefulness it is time to come up with another Ponzi ripoff that the Americans control at the behest of their slave masters in Israel. TPP is just more American Hegemony for all to absorb and reject.
Farms in CANADA are dirt cheap because of NAFTA and TPP.
Everyone has heard this 'deal' before.
Stop wholesaling energy production over the border at a terrible loss, not like any of the agreements in place are worth a cup of piss in the ocean anyways. The deficit claims and the tariffs dropped on the dairy industry will be meaningless without the 2000% subsidy on the nearly free electricity and dirt cheap oil that goes over the border. Sell at 12% profit and allow GoC to tax it on the provincial rate with a 50/50 split with the provinces to recoup the 25 years of loss over the next 9 years.
Illustrate which side and HOW the bread gets buttered..and what it really costs. Canada is done subsidizing southern dreamland nonsense and local markets can be readjusted with the gap and sliding priorities. More to the point. Force their hand to open the vault on the stolen technology they will require to survive. They don't like it. Too bad, they lied and all the people responsible for that decision are long gone and dead. They want to sit on it, their issue. They want to survive, they best open the vault for the energy projects from the 1920 and 1930's and suck it up for the best options to their longevity. Without it, the USA hasn't got a hope in hell.
Primary piece of advice: Don't cave. Squeeze their bag hard and get them in line. At this point they are hobbling on a drumstick and blowing smoke up their own asses on their 'value' towards a future. Other's are waiting in line with better offers with more pragmatic approaches under more balanced delivery approaches and it's up to these morons to clean their own hands at this point. Remember, don't have to save them all and you can review all options.
(If you want to twist the knife. All animal feed exports going over the border goes up in price as well. By 180% to rise to cost of production. Plug the hole from the mulroney years. Call it a surcharge since tariff and sur-tax are dirty words. In fact do a review of all export goods south of the border properly reflect their costs with 25 years of inflation.)
The reason the canadian farmers are less efficient has all to do with geography.
In Canada, we spend all of our summers preparing for winters and need millions
of dollars worth of buildings and energy to house ou livestock. In the southern states
farmers don't even need a barn to house their dairy cows and they can graise practically
all year. Does that mean all the milk should be produced down there as well as everything
else because it's cheaper? How about China? It's probably cheaper there yet! Better yet,
shouldn't we all live down there because it's more efficient?
I don't think so. That's why we have borders and arrangements that protect our food supply
and we'd be best to have more of the same to protect our industries in order that we may be
able to live here where we have good water and generally a much better lifestyle as a whole.
Got nothing to do with that. Mulroney sold Canada wholesale at Meech Lake, costs increase and the price of the commodities don't..pardon...aren't allowed to rise above the 1992 meech lake crap they constructed horribly. Add in Harper allowing theives to run the place, the economy is a mess because Canada's current economy was constructed to allow the American dream to happen. Look what that bought everyone.
Sweet fuck all. Time to kick the junkie off their heroin is all. Overdue in fact.
The truth is that every consumer in Canada gets ripped-off for just about everything compared to Americans.Business up here are nothing but a bunch of crooks,especially in clothing,boots,tools and food,booze,you name it.Even with the large difference between the American and Canadian Dollars,tons of Canadians still cross the border to shop in the States because they're tired of being fucking gouged on everything.Retailers up here are a bunch of shisters.
All these so called 'free trade' agreements are merely races to the buttom in order to create a new feudal system of haves and haves not.
If Canada has "equilibrium" with no competition.. that is not equilibrium. Their equilibrium means that they tarrif our dairy or keep it out, and this deal would just allow their people to buy these goods cheaper. Right now, OUR farmers pay the price for their equilibrium. Their loss is our gain. Fuck Canada.
This country is like a great big chicken just waiting to get plucked.
A free ranch chicken farm with no borders. why complain on this "American Dream" ?
How can an international business deal possibly be legit if it needs a government enforcement???
We need to punish Canada for going Socailist ;/
Harper fucked the Canadian people by signin them up to TPP. Fullstop.
Tariffs ? Who dreamed that up ? Cui bono ?
Try not to blame Ohbummer too much. He just rubber stamps the Zio. dictates. Be sure that the Zionist freaks will carry out their "Mad Max" scenario on America, just like Bibi promised. What will be left is a third world welfare, police. state, owing a massive debt to the "tribe".