A United States pork organization is lobbying the Canadian federal government to remove pork from its retaliatory counter-tariffs list, made in response to tariff threats levied by U.S. President Donald Trump.
According to a blog entry on its website, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) has written to Canada’s Department of Finance, noting that “tit-for-tat tariff exchanges” will disrupt supply chains built over decades between the two countries.
“We request that Canada seeks to preserve the benefits of the integrated North American market to the maximum extent practicable, including by excluding U.S. pork imports from retaliation,” the council said.
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At least one leader in the Canadian pork industry identifies with the group’s request.
“I agree with them. I prefer not to have tariffs on U.S. pork coming into Canada,” said Cam Dahl, general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council, adding that, “Everybody benefits from the integrated North American market. Producers in Canada benefit, producers in the U.S. benefit and consumers on both sides of the border benefit. But the ball is not really in our court, and so it really is in the U.S. administration’s court.”
WHY IT MATTERS: The Manitoba Pork Council and the rest of the Canadian pork industry has spent a lot of time in the last few months arguing that tariffs are mutually destructive to both U.S. and Canadian producers.
Dahl, like almost everyone else associated with Canadian agriculture, was still waiting to see what would happen April 2, the next deadline for U.S. tariffs to kick into high gear.
The trade war drama has thus far stretched for months, from Trump’s promises of 25 per cent blanket tariffs against Canada after being elected, to a series of deals, exemptions and timeline changes.
As of March 28, the U.S. had imposed 25 per cent tariffs against Canadian steel and aluminum. The earlier threatened widespread 25 per cent tariffs had come into play March 4, but had been softened two days later by an exemption for goods compliant with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement. That exemption did not cover a 10 per cent surcharge on Canadian energy and a reduced 10 per cent levy against potash, and was set to expire April 2.
Canada, meanwhile, had gone ahead with counter-tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods, with more retaliatory measures waiting in the wings.
As of the time of writing, it was not clear what either country would do after the April deadline passed.
“If Canadian pigs and Canadian pork receive tariffs (on April 2), it will be difficult not to do the same,” Dahl said.
Interdependent hog industry
The NPPC blog extolled the benefits of the U.S.-Canada pork trade system, saying the U.S. exported more than US$850 million of pork to Canada in 2024, while Canada sent US$1.7 billion of pork south.
“Additionally, Canada exported more than (US)$560 million worth of live swine to the United States last year, primarily to U.S. finishing and slaughter facilities where they were co-mingled with U.S. swine, and much of the pork was later exported back to Canada,” the industry group said.
Although the council said Canadian counter-tariffs would hurt that integrated relationship, it did not explicitly condemn the tariffs on Canada put forward by the Trump administration.
Instead, it touched on the alleged reasons for the tariffs, such as speculation about a porous Canadian border that the U.S. administration has blamed for illegal fentanyl trade migrant traffic into the U.S., claims questioned by the Canadian side.
“Trump has pledged to impose the tariffs on Canada – and China and Mexico – as a way to reduce the flow of illegal immigration and fentanyl into the United States, as well as to address an $80 billion trade deficit with Canada,” the American farm group wrote.
The integrated nature of the pork sector frequently sees Canadian hog prices echoing moves of hog prices in the U.S.
In 2018, Canadian industry found itself suffering indirect blow back from a different trade spat with the first Trump administration. China and Mexico had announced retaliatory measures against U.S. pork following American tariffs against steel and aluminum. Pork prices fell in the U.S., with the Canadian market tumbling after.
“Canadian pricing is tied to American markets so producer returns here have declined along with American producers’ price,” Farmtario’s John Greig reported at the time.
The issue led some industry to pondered whether Canadian livestock producers needed, or are able, to “decouple” the price Canadian farmers receive for their livestock from American prices.
George Matheson, then-chair of the Manitoba Pork Council, later noted that U.S. agriculture got aid to absorb some of the financial sting. Canadian producers got no such reprieve, he noted.
Although decoupling hasn’t made many waves since then, Dahl said it could happen depending on the length of a potential Canada-U.S. trade war and the socioeconomic relationship between the two countries going forward. Right now, however, the U.S. and Canada hog industries are solidly integrated.
“What’s going to happen if we start to see that integration disappear and we start to see pork flowing to other markets? Will we see a more distinctive Canadian price? That’s possible,” he said.
He does not, however, think that Canada’s retaliatory tariffs will be enough to drag on U.S. pork prices to the point that they hurt Canada’s own hog sector.
“The market’s complicated and so I don’t think that we can make the assumption that we’re going to see lower prices in the U.S. In fact, I would suggest that retail prices at least are going to be higher probably in both countries because of tariffs and counter-tariffs,” he said.
“I don’t think you can just draw a straight line between Canadian tariffs and the price of U.S. hogs. I think we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I don’t think that straight line is there.”
How Mexico factors
The wild card in this tariff environment is how Mexico — the destination for many U.S. pork exports — will react to U.S. tariffs. Bill Alford, general manager of Manitoba-based H@MS Marketing, said any retaliatory measures on U.S. pork by Mexico will likely have a far greater impact on prices than the counter-tariffs Canada may implement.
“Mexico is by far the largest destination for U.S. pork exports and, when they retaliate, that has much bigger effect on demand price related right through the market,” said Alford.
