We blame Trump, but Canada's supply management system hurts the poor

[Anonymous]

By Jerry Agar of Sun News media.



Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trying to make himself look tough against U.S. President Donald Trump by saying their trade fight is due to his brave defense of Canada's supply management system. But Trudeau does so to the continuing detriment of the poor.



Supply management limits production on dairy, eggs and poultry.



Defenders of the system say it keeps markets from getting saturated, keeps prices stable and ensures a steady income for farmers.



In other words, it is price fixing. It can easily be compared to the scandal grocery stores got themselves embroiled in after they got caught fixing bread prices.



Why do we think price fixing by grocery stores is bad, but just fine when it's done by the government and farmers?



CTV News reported this week: "the system also limits imports by slapping tariffs on imports beyond a certain level. For dairy products, those tariffs can be steep: nearly 300% for butter and cream, and 240 per cent for cheese, whole milk and yogurt."



Public policy think tank Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) reported: ""Supply management disproportionately hurts the poorest Canadians," explains Mario Dumais, Associate Researcher at the MEI and former economist for the Union des producteurs agricoles. "This system imposes an additional cost of $339 a year on the poorest households. As a proportion of income, this represents a negative impact that is five times greater than for rich households. This policy is therefore heavily regressive."



Economists Ryan Cardwell, Chad Lawley and Di Xiang at the University of Manitoba found similar numbers when they studied the impact of supply management on households.



In their report Milked and Feathered: The Regressive Welfare Effects of Canada's Supply Management Regime, Caldwell concluded that it is "... notable that all three national political parties staunchly support a system that impedes access to healthy foods, particularly for poor consumers. Such a policy counteracts poverty-reduction measures and healthy-eating initiatives that are undertaken by various levels of government."



Mark Milke is author of Tax me I'm Canadian: A Taxpayer's Guide to Your Money and How Politicians Spend It. In a piece in Maclean's he took Conservative leader Andrew Scheer to task for supporting supply management.



"Supply management is a relic of 1930s Soviet central planning influenced by Karl Marx," Milke wrote.



"It never should have been introduced into Canada. So let's call supply management what it is: Marxist economics applied to dairy cows."



It is true that while Trump attacks our supply management system, his government supports agriculture and artificially lowers grocery prices in America.



I'm not arguing that governments should be interfering with the marketplace, but since they do, it is important to discuss the impact of that interference.



The U.S. uses a system of tax breaks and incentives to control agriculture.



Therefore they support the farmer, as we do in Canada, but at the expense of the taxpayer. The richer a person is, the more it is their taxes that support the system. Lower prices at American grocery stores are of greater assistance to the poor.



Therefore the American system is progressive, in comparison to our regressive system.



Can we finally set up a Canadian system that cares for the poor, or is Trump hatred so strongly it blinds Canadians to who we should be?

[Frood]

Good article.

[Anonymous]

Here's more about our agriculture supply management system.



OTTAWA — u.s. President donald Trump upped the ante on Canada's supplymanaged dairy system over the weekend as he repeatedly warned that the country would face repercussions unless it is dismantled.



Here's what you need to know about supply management, including why Trump wants to get rid of it — and why federal governments of all stripes have said no:



The Basics



supply management in its current form has been around since the 1970s and applies to three main segments of the farming industry: dairy, eggs and poultry.



The system basically limits production by allowing only a certain amount of each to be produced. The idea is to keep the market from getting saturated, which aims to keep prices stable and ensures steady incomes for farmers.



The system also limits imports by slapping tariffs on imports beyond a certain level. For dairy products, those tariffs can be steep: nearly 300% for butter and cream, and 240% for cheese, whole milk and yogurt.



The Pros and cons



Trump is far from the first to attack supply management in Canada, particularly when it comes to dairy; new Zealand and australia threatened to keep Canada out of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) if it didn't change its ways.



Critics of the system, which includes many people inside Canada, say it poses a barrier to the completion of ambitious free-trade deals with other countries, with the government having to give up on other areas to protect the industry during negotiations.



It also drives up the cost of dairy, eggs and chicken for consumers, which opponents of the system allege has had an unfairly disproportionate impact on low-income families.



The Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank that advocates for an end to supply management, estimated last year that the average Canadian household pays $600 more for milk and chicken than in the u.s.



Proponents, however, say the system protects Canadian farmers from the type of price fluctuations that have ravaged other segments of the agricultural industry and eliminates the need for government bailouts.

[Anonymous]

Ignorant people blame Trump, but he is not wrong about our archaic supply management system.



From Sun News media.



Hollywood elite Robert De Niro created a lot of buzz at the Tony Awards for telling the world to "F--k Trump," and then got more headlines opening a restaurant in Toronto by apologizing for his president's behaviour. Frankly, we don't give a damn.



De Niro can afford to be a Hollywood elitist because he has more money than he knows what to do with — which is why he is opening another restaurant. We, on the other hand, don't. What we need is a prime minister who does not go out of his way to yank the chain of a mercurial president of the United States who will use any excuse to be offended and therefore derail any hopes of solidifying a mutual advantageous North American Free Trade Agreement.



Justin Trudeau cannot be so dumb that he doesn't realize you don't wave a red flag in front of a president that sees himself as the alpha bull in the G7 barnyard, and therefore invincible.



All the name calling that went on over the weekend with some of Trump's top surrogates calling our prime minister both weak and traitorous to America when it comes to a free-trade agreement is not worth getting overly hyped up or thin-skinned sensitive.



It is just Trump being Trump. There is no need, therefore, in getting all worked up that the NAFTA sky is falling, and that Canada's U.s.dependent economy is about to take a massive hit because of Trump's overly protectionist position.



He doesn't have very many Americans on his side who have expertise in trade and economies of scale.



The Americans who know through their own business dealings that Canada is the best partner any nation can have will eventually rule the day.



It is time, therefore, to chill out. Trump likes to pride himself as being the king of the deal, but if it looks like he is losing both the deal and his all-tooprecious sense of self-importance, he will back off and pretend he was right all along.



He is, without question, an odd opponent.



But he is still the American president, and not someone to dust off because he is not what is considered the norm.



He has to be played and played with skill.

[Anonymous]

Good article.

I agree DD..



I wondered why our dairy products are so much more expensive than in the USA.

[Wazzzup]

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like Trump got mad over canadian tariffs on US dairy products, and said that if Canada is going to do that then Trump would apply tariffs to canadian goods brought into the US.  Then trudeau went to the press saying he was outraged that Trump would threaten tariffs.  That is why trump and company are angry --Trudeau's hypocrisy and the press conference were an especially insulting combination.  Most likely Trump will impose tariffs because of all of it.



Both sides will get hurt, Canada will get hurt more though.  I hate to see our countries at odd.  But I blame Trudeau first and foremost.

[Anonymous]

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like Trump got mad over canadian tariffs on US dairy products, and said that if Canada is going to do that then Trump would apply tariffs to canadian goods brought into the US.  Then trudeau went to the press saying he was outraged that Trump would threaten tariffs.  That is why trump and company are angry --Trudeau's hypocrisy and the press conference were an especially insulting combination.  Most likely Trump will impose tariffs because of all of it.



Both sides will get hurt, Canada will get hurt more though.  I hate to see our countries at odd.  But I blame Trudeau first and foremost.

When did our federal government do that Wazzzup?

[Angry White Male]

I wondered why our dairy products are so much more expensive than in the USA.

Wanna know what's strange?  I worked for a customer not long ago that was building an expansion for a local dairy processing plant.



What was puzzling to me, was that day after day, I kept seeing the same US milk trucks unloading US milk into the plant, amongst the Canadian milk trucks.



Don't know what they did with the US milk...  Make cheese?  Pour it into milk containers?



Don't know...

[Anonymous]

I wondered why our dairy products are so much more expensive than in the USA.

Wanna know what's strange?  I worked for a customer not long ago that was building an expansion for a local dairy processing plant.



What was puzzling to me, was that day after day, I kept seeing the same US milk trucks unloading US milk into the plant, amongst the Canadian milk trucks.



Don't know what they did with the US milk...  Make cheese?  Pour it into milk containers?



Don't know...

That does seem strange.

[Angry White Male]

Every day they delivered.



That's one product you do not expect to see crossing the border, is milk in tankers.



Then again, keep running into another guy that comes up for just regular gravel from the gravel pits, and takes it back into Washington State with him...

[Anonymous]

Every day they delivered.



That's one product you do not expect to see crossing the border, is milk in tankers.



Then again, keep running into another guy that comes up for just regular gravel from the gravel pits, and takes it back into Washington State with him...

I'm not surprised that milk trucks cross the border.

[Angry White Male]

I've hauled weird shit too.  Hauled steel 'rings' that are used on the engines of Boeing's up from Renton to here, where they were given a simple 'milling' if you will, and then hauled them back down to Boeing two days later.  They couldn't do that down there?



They were a basic wide load, and may explain why jet engines are the size that they are...  Any one-piece 'ring' or whatever it was called, had it been any larger, would've required pilot trucks and lane control, rather than simple signs and flags that I tossed on...  Explains why the jet engines are often the diameter that they are, for logistical reasons.

[Angry White Male]

Then another time bring this one piece of wood down, bit it was pretty big...  Like 3 feet by 3 feet, and maybe 40 feet long or whatever it was.



Rough milled, but I guess only the US can handle the final milling?



Found that out when I was sent back two days later to bring back the 'final milled' piece of wood that I delivered just two days ago!



You do the day trips trucking into the States for a while like I did, and sometimes you just shake your fucking head as to what gets shipped back and forth.  Bring wood up, bring wood back down!  What the fuck?



Sometimes items moved across border made no sense to me from a logistical perspective, but obviously these hauls would not be done unless there is a monetary incentive for company to do so...

[Anonymous]

Then another time bring this one piece of wood down, bit it was pretty big...  Like 3 feet by 3 feet, and maybe 40 feet long or whatever it was.



Rough milled, but I guess only the US can handle the final milling?



Found that out when I was sent back two days later to bring back the 'final milled' piece of wood that I delivered just two days ago!



You do the day trips trucking into the States for a while like I did, and sometimes you just shake your fucking head as to what gets shipped back and forth.  Bring wood up, bring wood back down!  What the fuck?



Sometimes items moved across border made no sense to me from a logistical perspective, but obviously these hauls would not be done unless there is a monetary incentive for company to do so...

What was the wood used for?

[Wazzzup]

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like Trump got mad over canadian tariffs on US dairy products, and said that if Canada is going to do that then Trump would apply tariffs to canadian goods brought into the US.  Then trudeau went to the press saying he was outraged that Trump would threaten tariffs.  That is why trump and company are angry --Trudeau's hypocrisy and the press conference were an especially insulting combination.  Most likely Trump will impose tariffs because of all of it.



Both sides will get hurt, Canada will get hurt more though.  I hate to see our countries at odd.  But I blame Trudeau first and foremost.

When did our federal government do that Wazzzup?

According to this http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jun/13/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-tweets-about-canadas-2/">http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... canadas-2/">http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jun/13/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-tweets-about-canadas-2/ its been there for decades.



Other presidents like Obama just ignored countries imposing tariffs and didn't impose tariffs on their products.  It appears trump is insisting that anyone who wants to trade with the US tariff free will have to take away tariffs on US goods.  Also as SB pointed out tariffs on dairy hurt canadian consumers.  They help the dairy farmers in Canada, but nobody else.

For decades, Canada has protected its dairy industry, erecting trade barriers that diminish foreign competition and result in higher prices for Canadian consumers. While this has prompted longstanding complaints by the United States and other exporters, the tariffs have survived, thanks in part to a strong dairy lobby that Canadian politicians have been loath to oppose.



After a small fixed quota of U.S. exports is reached, Canada imposes a tariff on any dairy products brought into the country, with the level varying a bit depending on the specific product. For instance, fluid milk is 241 percent, cheese is 245.5 percent, ice cream is 277 percent, cream is 292.5 percent, and butter is 298.5 percent.