Reed, a Corning Republican, and Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, joined other members of the House Ways and Means Committee in a morning meeting with Trudeau, who was later scheduled to meet with President Trump.
Trudeau’s meeting with lawmakers was private. But afterward, Reed said he was able to raise the dairy and wine issues with the Canadian leader. Reed said Trudeau was amenable to changes that could help New York farmers and wineries.
«He recognizes that that’s one of the fundamental issues being updated,» Reed said.
New York dairy farmers complain that the Canadian dairy industry operates like a cartel that increasingly shuts them out of the market to the north. Meantime, Reed noted that much U.S.-made wine being brought into Canada is subject to a tax, whereas Canadian wine brought into the United States is not.
Reed wants those issues to be addressed in current negotiations to update the 25-year-old trade agreement, which Trump says has grievously hurt U.S. manufacturers.
Negotiators for the United States, Canada and Mexico have been struggling for months to modernize the agreement, which was drawn up before the era of daily Internet use and online shopping. Negotiators face a list of daunting U.S. demands, including a sharply increased U.S. content in autos manufactured under the deal.
Trump doesn’t seem optimistic that those demands can be met.
«I happen to think NAFTA will have to be terminated,» Trump told Forbes magazine in an interview published Tuesday.
Reed, however, was much more optimistic.
«I think we end up coming up with a better agreement, a more modern agreement,» he said.
Higgins never got a chance to speak during the 45-minute committee meeting with Trudeau, but he said afterward that he is also hoping for improvements in the deal.
Among the changes Higgins would like to see is a provision that calls for the trade deal to be revisited every three to five years so that it can be kept up to date. The Trump administration is demanding that change as well.
Higgins said he’s hoping a new NAFTA would improve the movement of commerce at the U.S.-Canadian border while also strengthening provisions on labor rights and the environment.
He also agrees with Trump trying to strike a hard bargain.
Noting that America’s economy is the world’s largest and one that any nation would like to trade with, Higgins said: «I think that we have tremendous leverage that we don’t take advantage of.»
And while Higgins routinely votes against trade agreements, arguing they are often too broad, too vague and skewed against the American worker, he acknowledged that the Buffalo area would likely suffer if the United States did not have a trade deal with its neighbor to the north.
«I think there would be consequences, most of which would be negative,» he said.
Before the Ways and Means Committee meeting, Trudeau indicated that the United States and Canada are strong trading partners in part because of NAFTA, saying he wanted that to continue.
«In terms of trade, the U.S. sells more to Canada than it does to China, Japan and the UK combined,» Trudeau noted.
Link: http://buffalonews.com/2017/10/11/reed-presses-trudeau-dairy-wine-issues-nafta/
