Tariffs of 25 per cent on Canadian exports to the U.S. that were set to take effect today have been put on pause, bringing some temporary relief to Manitoba’s pork industry even as the threat still looms.
Prior to Monday’s development that tariffs were being put on pause for 30 days, Scott Peters, president of Herbsigwil Farms west of Steinbach, Man., said the measure would be a “gut punch” that would affect both pork products processed in Canada and the export of live piglets south of the border.
“That’s a major blow to our bottom line and to the farms,” Peters said in an interview at his hog farm Monday before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada temporarily averted Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Peters said if tariffs were to take effect it could impact both jobs and the number of animals at Herbsigwil Farms, which got into the hog business in 1999. It, along with other partners, now employs around 50 people as part of an operation with 15,000 sow pigs that finishes another 170,000 pigs per year in Canada and the U.S.
The hog industry in the U.S. imports piglets from Canada to be raised and processed in that country.
“Ultimately we need the U.S. for our products and that’s the bottom line,” Peters said. “We can’t eat our way out of this at all.”
Impact being felt already, despite pause
Manitoba exports more than $450 million worth of pork and another $200 million in livestock annually, according to Manitoba Pork general manager Cam Dahl.
Dahl told CBC News Monday the pause on tariffs was announced that some contracts with U.S. partners that “were expected and not signed” and some shipments of live animals had been delayed.
“We have already started to see some of those impacts,” he said.
Dahl said Manitoba produces eight million pigs annually at just over 600 farms and that there are more 22,000 jobs in the province that depend on the pork sector.
While the pause brought some temporary relief, the concern lingers as the threat of tariffs hangs over the industry.
“That’s part of the uncertainty,” Dahl said.
“Manitoba’s pigs going into the U.S. — and over three million of them do that every year — they’re going to be 25 per cent more expensive” if tariffs are imposed after a 30-day pause, he said.
Dahl said U.S. pork producers import Manitoba weanlings because “they don’t have the sows to produce all the pigs that they need for their finishing operations in places like Iowa, for example.”
He also said Canada ships “very healthy animals down in the U.S. and so that’s a bonus.”
Partnership with U.S. ‘well-oiled machine’
Peters said the trading partnership is very intertwined between Manitoba and the U.S., and any disruption to that relationship would affect the pork industry on both sides of the border.
“They will impact us directly,” Peters said. “It doesn’t matter if we finish pigs in Canada or if we sell weanlings into the U.S. … the well-oiled machine that we have is in jeopardy of breaking down.”
He took a CBC News crew into one of the barns on his farm where thousands of pigs are raised for slaughter and processing at HyLife’s pork plant in Neepawa, Man.
Even as the threat of tariffs loomed, Peters remained optimistic.
“We hope that cooler heads will prevail here and maybe it’ll all just get turned around,” he said, prior to the pause being announced.
Peters said many farms have upgraded their barns and operations.
“There’s money in the industry now finally after several years of hard times,” he said. “I know that companies, family farms are renovating to keep current.”
He said industry representatives are continuing to work hard by visiting the U.S. to maintain the relationship with producers across the border in what he describes as a “tightly-knit … business community” amid the ongoing threat of tariffs.
“Nobody wants to see this,” Peters said.