The National Milk Producers Federation and U.S. Dairy Export Council Wednesday applauded the Biden administration for its initiation of a second U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement dispute panel. The dispute panel focuses on Canada’s ongoing refusal to meet its USMCA dairy trade obligations. The first USMCA dispute panel launched by the U.S. government determined in January that Canada violated the agreement's dairy tariff-rate quota provisions. On May 16, Canada published its final revised USMCA dairy TRQ approach, which failed to fix its USMCA-violating practices. To address the additional problems Canada’s revised approach has raised and to defend the integrity of the agreement, the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office has brought an additional case. NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern says, “Canada continues to flout these trade commitments and plays games rather than meet its signed treaty commitments.” The dairy groups say Canada’s updated TRQ system continues to block key stakeholders in the Canadian food and agriculture sector from accessing the TRQs.
