CWB applauds NAFTA panel decision
The Canadian Wheat Board said it welcomed the ruling Tuesday by a North American Free Trade Agreement panel, which found that imports of Canadian hard red spring wheat cause no injury to U.S. producers.
In September 2002, the North Dakota Wheat Commission and the U.S. Durum Growers Association filed petitions seeking antidumping and countervailing duties on imports of durum and hard red spring wheat from Canada. In 2003, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) applied a 14.15-percent tariff on imports to the United States of Canadian hard red spring wheat.
“The panel concludes that the ITC’s finding that increased volumes of subject imports depressed prices is not supported by evidence,” said the NAFTA panel in a 91-page document.
“We are confident that the ITC will now do the right thing and move quickly to lift the tariff so that we can resume marketing our high quality wheat to our American customers,” said Ken Ritter, chairman of the CWB.
“We believe the existing trade agreements between Canada and the U.S. should be worth more than the paper they are written on,” Ritter said. “The U.S. market is an important one for Prairie grain farmers and we will not let some well-financed special interest groups shut us out of it.”
The full text of the NAFTA panel’s ruling is available at http://www.nafta-sec-alena.org/app/DocRepository/1/Dispute/english/NAFTA_Chapter_19/USA/ua03060e.pdf .