<p class="MsoNormal">Last week, President Donald Trump called Canada&rsquo;s policy change on dairy a &ldquo;disgrace&rdquo; for what it&rsquo;s done to the farming industry in Wisconsin and criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;What they&rsquo;ve done to our dairy farm workers is a disgrace. It&rsquo;s a disgrace,&rdquo; ;said Trump.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then on Tuesday morning he expressed similar sentiments on Twitter.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch!&rdquo; tweeted Trump.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The day prior his administration announced that the U.S. will be slapping new tariffs on softwood lumber coming from Canada.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&#8220;We&#8217;re going to be putting a 20% tax on softwood lumber coming in &mdash; tariff on softwood coming into the United States from Canada,&rdquo; said Trump, reported <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breitbart News.</em>  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Commerce Department announced that the U.S. would impose a &ldquo;countervailing duty&rdquo; ;of between 3-24% on Canadian lumber exporter.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Canada imported roughly $5.66 billion in softwood lumber in 2016, according to the U.S. Commerce Department</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Wilbur Ross, U.S. Commerce Secretary, said this would cost the Canadian lumber industry an additional $1 billion.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Last Monday, it became apparent that Canada intends to effectively cut off the last dairy products being exported from the United States. Today, in a different matter, the Department of Commerce determined a need to impose countervailing duties of roughly one billion dollars on Canadian softwood lumber exports to us,&rdquo; said Ross in a statement. &#8220;This is not our idea of a properly functioning Free Trade Agreement.&#8221; ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Chuck Schumer, New York Senator, who is often quick to oppose Trump&rsquo;s policies, supports Trump on this move.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Been fighting for NY dairy farmers on this. Glad to see @POTUS join our fight to change Canada&#8217;s unfair policy that undercuts our farmers,&rdquo; tweeted Schumer.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The U.S. Dairy industry also issued a statement in support.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Our federal and state governments cannot abide by Canada&rsquo;s disregard for its trade commitment to the United States, and its intentional decision to pursue policies that are choking off sales of American-made milk to the detriment of U.S. dairy farmers,&rdquo; said Tom Vilsack, president and CEO of the US Dairy Export Council, in a statement earlier this month.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Canada rejected the new duty calling it &ldquo;unfair and punitive.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&#8220;The Government of Canada disagrees strongly with the U.S. Department of Commerce&#8217;s decision to impose an unfair and punitive duty,&#8221; said Jim Carr, Canada&#8217;s Minister of Natural Resources, and Chrystia Freeland, Canada&#8217;s Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a joint statement. &#8220;The accusations are baseless and unfounded.&#8221;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They also threatened to sue, if necessary.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Author&rsquo;s Note:</strong> Canada may not like this, but Trump is keeping his promise to keep America first, even if it means pissing off our largest trading partner. ;Just because Canada is a close trading partner, doesn&rsquo;t mean we should let them get away with policy changes that violate our trade agreements, while having detrimental effects on our dairy industry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Editor&#8217;s note</strong>: Strategically this is interesting because it puts China and others on notice that Trump is not playing favorites. It moves all future negotiations toward his favor.</p>
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