Farmscape for April 9, 2025

A southwestern Manitoba farmer is calling for a patient reasoned response from the federal government to the imposition reciprocal tariffs by the United States on its trading partners that avoids escalating a brewing trade war.
On April 2'nd U.S. President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs ranging from 10 to 50 percent on 75 of its global trading partners and, while Canada and Mexico were excluded, the threat of additional tariffs remains on the table.
Jim Downey, a southwestern Manitoba farmer and former Manitoba cabinet minister, acknowledges it's hard to read what's happening in the United States from day to day but, at this point, we still have the ability to trade freely with the U.S.

Clip-Jim Downey-Southwestern Manitoba Farmer:
It's an interesting observation that I do not believe that Mexico imposed any countervailing duties on the duties being imposed by the U.S. government on them.
Again, we're all revved up about this thing but I think cooler heads will prevail.
We're in a short-term situation that's got everybody upset.
I think, as we start to move down the road a little bit, we will find other markets, we will find other friends, we will do other things that will enhance trade and it will take some time.
It will take some resources but the worst thing we can do is over play the hand of retribution again them bringing in tariffs.
We bring in tariffs to counter them, he goes around and ups the tariff again so you're in a spiral to the ground.
To retaliate is a political action that, under normal conditions, might not be the best way to go and the Mexican President showed that.
They are not retaliating against the U.S. tariffs.

Downey says as far as he and every economist he has listened are concerned a tariff is nothing more than a tax on people, whether they're eating or buying cars, and a trade war is a race to the bottom that, at the end of the day, nobody wins.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is produced on behalf of North America’s pork producers