Shall we speculate a bit?

[rsomer]

Actually we are very important in the big picture. Canada is the United States number one export destination, with 23.2% of American exports coming into this country, Mexico is second 14.1%, Japan a distant third 7.4%, and America's best friends the UK is way back at 4.8% (2002). Imports? Again Canada is the number one source of imports entering the United States. Canada is number one at 17.8%, Mexico is second here also at 11.3%, China a surprising third 11.1%, Japan trails China in fourth place at 10.4%, Germany is fifth 5.3%. America's best friends the British aren’t even on the radar screen, Aussies are not important either. So the fact of the matter is the U.S. heavily relies on Canada for both exports and imports.
A lot of people do not know that the Auto Pact has been gone since 1999. See: http://cbc.ca/stories/1999/10/14/autopact991014 and http://www.jama.ca/default.htm?/lib/news/news4.htm
The Auto Pact was heralded as a Canada’s most successful trade agreement, an effort at selective trade liberalization. The success of the Auto Pact would have been one of the driving forces behind the implentation of NAFTA. NAFTA effectively rules out the possibility of restricting oil and gas exports to the U.S. so yes, for better or worse we are tied to the U.S. NAFTA should have prevented the border closing to our cattle once we had taken the steps to minimize the risk of BSE by slaughtering the cows from Marwyn Peaster’s Wanham, Alta. herd and therein lies the problem. NAFTA is only working one way.

[lonewolf]

MAYBE IT IS TIME TO ASK OUR POLITIANS TO PUT THE US ON NOTICE THAT IN 6 MONTHS WE ARE OUT OF NAFTA.

[cowman]

rsomer: I was talking about our beef industry not being very important in the big picture. It certainly isn't worth getting into a major trade war over...at least not to most Canadians.
NAFTA has been good to us. The Canadian government has been the problem. Why no challege when the US violates NAFTA as I think they are doing with the beef? They challenged soft wood lumber(and lost) they challenged how many times over the CWB(and won). They challenged over the tariff on live cattle a few years ago(and won) and pork before that.
The Americans are always going to push the limit, I believe it is their nature? But why didn't our government slap a tax on all the imported subsidized corn last winter? Win or lose wouldn't have mattered, it would have stopped the flow! This was definitely blatant dumping of a product with a huge loss to our grain farmers. It just wasn't fair.

[rusty1]

6- months. the beef industry won't exist is 6 mmonths.
Again I say - The US is VIOLATING the NAFTA agreement by keeping the borders closed. Pure and simple.
And again - if we chocked down the gas for 1 day (Friday) with the rumor that we going on holidays Monday. I guarantee they would notice Canada. Cowman would't be out rolaties very dang long. Further more, I think that an open border would be worth more to cowman than a couple of weeks royalties.
I talked to a aution barn down here yesterday and he had a banker tell him that they were waiting for the first bank to close a feedlot so they didn't have to be the first.
"when 1 starts it will be a snowball", simply because of trade protectionizm.

[rsomer]

Although I have said several times that the U.S. is violating NAFTA by keeping the borders closed that might be wrong. I see Mexico doing the same thing to both Canada and the U.S. as well Canada has some restrictions on imports of American beef. They certainly are violating the intent of NAFTA if not the letter of the law.

[Willowcreek]

Wait until the U.S. gets the new trade agreement with Australia that they're negotiating now. Beef and dairy are two of the items they're planning to let Australia import big time. U.S. cattle prices will probably take a big hit- especially the cull cattle market. What will that do to the Canadian market?