Analyst says some agriculture sectors have escaped Trump tariffs

In his presentation, “What’s next for the Global Pork Market” Stuart said agriculture has been a front row participant of Donald Trump’s trade agenda.

“Bottom line, I would say is this. I think Trump’s agenda has pretty much rolled out on tariffs. The impact on agriculture, I would say, has been quite minimal, compared to what we thought it could be,” he said. “You can look at the U.S. and Canada; our agriculture trade is still pretty much all tariff free.”

Stuart said one industry that has been affected is Brazil. Brazilian beef to the U.S. pays a 76 per cent tariff.

“It has stopped most of that from coming but, outside of Brazilian beef, we really haven’t seen much of an impact,” he added.

U.S. beef prices are high. Stuart said the U.S. is going to have record-high beef imports on a year that tariffs were imposed.

“But we’re also seeing some new deals. A week ago, President Trump was in Southeast Asia. He signed deals with four countries down there, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand. We’ll see what those turn out to be,” he said. “He also announced a deal with China that removes the retaliatory tariffs. That pretty much takes us back maybe to part of where we were, but we’ll see where these deals go.”

Stuart said there is one wild card. The Supreme Court is reviewing the legality of tariffs. He said as early as January/February, we’ll find out what their decision is, and that ruling will stand. He said there is a possibility Trump could lose his authority to impose tariffs and that would be a big change.

Stuart added the 25 per cent tariff imposed in March on Canadian goods going south, then raised to 35 per cent in August, only applies to products not covered by the Canada U.S. Mexico agreement. It accounts for only about 15 per cent of trade with the U.S. and doesn’t impact agriculture.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

by Alice McFarlane

Analyst says some agriculture sectors have escaped Trump tariffs

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