Canada’s frustrating dairy hardball could slow TPP talks, says New Zealand envoy

But the planned event in Parliament’s Centre Block never happened.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has pledged to reach a deal, signaled from Ottawa that the team led by Trade Minister Ed Fast has the flexibility to reach an accord.

Two key issues stalling the discussions in Maui were dairy for New Zealand and Japan’s automotive trade.

Petersen declined to go into details about the cards Canada has put on the table, but he said it will have to offer more concessions on dairy access at the ongoing talks than it gave up while negotiating its free-trade deal with the European Union.

“I view such a strain tactic as simply extra negotiating by means of the media, and we’ve been constant in not partaking in that, preferring as an alternative to take a seat down on the desk in a extra constructive method”, Rick Roth wrote in an e mail.

The federal government says the countries involved in the negotiations represent some 800 million people with a combined gross domestic product of roughly 40 per cent of the global economy.

Now supply management protects his bottom line, giving farmers a stable price for what they produce.

Meanwhile, US trade representative Michael Froman said they had made “significant progress and we will continue to work on resolving a limited number of remaining issues”.

Agriculture is one of the final sticking points – participants described that as a normal phenomenon in trade negotiations, given the political sensitivity around farming and food.

“It’s so small that it’s onerous to take it critically at this level”, Petersen stated of a suggestion by Canada to unlock the door to its dairy market.

But one trade expert at the meetings said a 12-party negotiation is too complex to be boiled down to one issue and one country.

“The question is, who moves?”

More than 80% of Canadians contacted said they didn’t mind paying more for milk produced in Canada because it doesn’t contain growth hormones.

At the same time the U.S. has a counter-demand – that other countries increase protections for cutting-edge pharmaceuticals against copycat versions.

So the stakes of this deal would extend beyond grocery stores, farms, research labs and pharmacies – where prices could rise or plunge, depending on the product.

They could also be felt at ballot boxes around the world.

In the U.S., with presidential primaries beginning in five months, Hillary Clinton is facing pressure from her Democratic party’s left to oppose the TPP and has avoided comment so far.

“Once I’ve got a deal to recommend to the Cabinet, and for the Cabinet to then recommend to the New Zealand people through Parliament, I am extremely confident we will win the war”.

The Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand (DCANZ) is commending New Zealand Trade Minister, Tim Groser, for standing firm against enormous pressure to concede to a sub-standard deal for dairy.

This would happen as the demographics of global trade loosened the intransigence of some countries’ trade ministers, he said.

“That’s the risk (with delays)”, said Wolff, who negotiated U.S. access to the Japanese market in the 1970s, helped draft early U.S. fast-track trade legislation, and worked on the landmark GATT treaty.

A better Canadian offer could resolve the interlocking disagreements common at the end phase of trade talks, Petersen of New Zealand said.

Dairy makes up about 20 per cent of New Zealand’s exports but faces large tariffs in many countries. New Zealand and Australia have opened their agricultural sectors, as have, to a lesser degree, the Latin American TPP countries. U.S.-Canada ties have already been strained over the Obama administration’s failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from northern Alberta to refineries on the Texas gulf coast. If it’s going to happen anytime in the next two and a half months, however, he’ll have to negotiate it from the campaign trail.