People in Prince Edward Island’s beef industry have told American politicians face to face that they are worried about Donald Trump’s impending tariff on imports from Canada.
The U.S. president-elect is promising to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all goods entering the U.S. from Canada and Mexico on Jan. 20, his first day in office, unless the countries curb the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders.
Russ Mallard was part of a Canadian delegation who went to Washington in December to express Canadian concerns to Republican members of the Senate and chair of the agriculture committee for the House of Representatives.
“We had a chance to express our concerns about how it would affect not only our industries here, but also their industries there and their consumers there, with the possibility of high prices,” said Mallard, president of Atlantic Beef Products, based in Albany, P.E.I., as well as chair of the Canadian Meat Council.
He said the American legislators were familiar with the concerns about the proposed tariff, since they have been hearing the same thing from some of their own constituents.
‘Possibility of job losses’
A Statistics Canada report recorded just 7,100 beef cattle being reared on Prince Edward Island in January 2024. That’s about 1.5 per cent of Canada’s total beef production, at 11.9 million head, with Alberta being the largest producer at 44 million cattle. Herds are at record lows in both Canada and the U.S.
