Last week the National Potato Council sent a letter to the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal highlighting how Canadian regulators reject economic data from U.S. potato producers, blocking a review of a 40-year-old antidumping order.
National Potato Council CEO Kam Quarles says the order, which has been in place since 1984, is unique in that it claims U.S. growers were only dumping potatoes in British Columbia.
“They’re saying that dumping is only occurring in a single province in Canada and everything else that the Americans are doing is legitimate and has been legitimate for 40 years,” he says.
Quarles says it’s impossible for U.S. growers to operate two different business models: one illegally dumping in British Columbia and another operating on a level playing field in the other provinces.
“That’s just that’s not how economics works. ... The Americans have never dumped into British Columbia,” he says. “They’ve never dumped into any Canadian province or anywhere else around the world for that matter.”
Escalating Minimum Import Prices and Administrative Rejections
Last summer, Canada Border Services Agency officials raised the floor price for American potatoes entering the British Columbia market. Quarles says this increase would have been a record price for potatoes.
“The minimum you had to sell at to enter the British Columbia market as an American was higher than you had ever received for that type of potatoes in history,” he says. “That just completely slammed the market to a halt. Millions of dollars were lost last year because of this doubling down on the absurdities of the last 40 years.”
Added to that, and the core purpose of the letter, Quarles says American growers have provided economic impact data to the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and other authorities during various reviews. However, if Canadian authorities deem any small item insufficient, the entire submission is rejected, creating a false impression that there is no interest from U.S. growers to review the order.
“The purpose of our letter was to flag that this is a rigged game, and it is costing millions of dollars in U.S. exports that should be flowing to British Columbia, but because British Columbia is in concert with a Canadian government has rigged the system, all those exports from the United States can’t flow,” he says.
Quarles says this order denies some of the basic benefits of duty-free access afforded to Canadian and U.S. growers through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“Even though it’s a separate process, it’s very much interrelated, because the goal is for there to be less friction amongst the three countries in trade,” he says. “And it’s supposed to be fair trade.”
Unbalanced Market Access Between U.S. and Canada
Because potato production in British Columbia is a smaller industry, this order is likely used to protect provincial growers in a highly competitive market. Quarles notes that growers across Canada face no comparable barriers in the U.S.
“We have no similar restrictions,” he says. “All of those producers across Canada have full access to the United States. They receive all of the USMCA benefits.”
The Canada Border Services Agency already ruled to keep the antidumping order in place, and Quarles says that it’s more than likely the Canadian International Trade Tribunal will rule the same, as it hasn’t lifted antidumping orders in the past; he says this particular order should be part of the larger USMCA free-trade discussions.
“In the larger context of USMCA and all of these discussions over the balance of trade between the U.S. and Canada, we’re highlighting this just because it’s been so egregious and so recent that we feel like it needs to be part of the consideration of these discussions,” he says.
