“All warfare is based on deception.” —Sun Tzu
What can we say about the first round of Donald Trump’s chaotic effort to kick-start a trade war between Canada and the U.S.? Let’s just jump to the end and say wiser heads prevailed.
The Feb. 1-3 weekend of promised tariffs had forecasts of shock and awe but ended without even a puff of smoke.
What we do know is that Canadian and American producers want to get back to working together. Throw U.S. and Mexico into the equation as well. In the case of beef cattle, one of the most successful transborder industries in the world is still going strong.
What should be understood is: Given all the strain, it doesn’t need to happen again. As the weekend of Feb. 1 drew near, some of the cattle markets in western Canada began seeing a drastic slowdown in sales. Levi Pedgerachny’s report from North Central Livestock Exchange in Clyde, Alberta, told of producers taking the patient approach “to see what Trump does.”
“Lots of producers are phoning, wondering what is happening with the market, what will the prices be? At this point, I don’t think anyone really knows.”
You can say that again, Levi. But I appreciate how he ended with a sincere "hope things get straightened out and we can get back to selling cattle at record prices.”
The Winnipeg Livestock Sales (WLS) report presented a bit more anxiety. “Rumours were flying in the front row this week as the threat of tariffs loomed,” the WLS website report said. “Worries about brokers having software in place to accommodate the tariffs, to word of Cargill voiding or canceling April contracts had buyers wary.”
That kind of chaos in this tariff standoff is frustrating to me and probably most of you. Why create so much uncertainty when there’s been so much success on both sides? If history has proven that Canada-U.S. beef trade has pulled both nations through difficult chapters such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), drought, wildfires, recessions, etc., why chance the relationship? What trade imbalance should be won by using ag commodities as a bargaining chip? Timber? Steel? Grains? Where was the need and what was won?
That was a question I tried asking many times during the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association CattleCon in February, and I got no answers other than border security (which was mostly being done already).
But here’s some clarity for you. If you want to use tariffs to protect your country’s goods from an unfair market, that’s logical. If you think tariffs will help fund your government to fund billion-dollar programs, that’s much harder.
But if you’re claiming you can do both – and that’s what Trump argues – that is impossible. Economists have proven it for centuries. Tariffs will either stop trade, or they tax consumers to a painful level of profit. But you never really pull off both.
There is no deception in Canada-U.S. beef trade – it works exceptionally well on both sides. Let’s hope the fog of trade war doesn’t return.
