Originally posted by ajl
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http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/commodities-business-pmn/agriculture-commodities-business-pmn/baloney-meter-does-the-united-states-protect-its-dairy-producers-too
"Adam Taylor, a trade consultant who was an aide to the former Conservative trade minister in Canada, says there’s a more insidious form of U.S. subsidies — undocumented migrant workers on U.S. dairy farms.
Taylor pointed to a pair of surveys that measured the impact of undocumented workers on the dairy industry.
A September 2015 survey by the U.S. National Milk Producers Federation found that half of all workers on U.S. dairy farms are immigrants and if those workers were excluded from the workforce, the price of a gallon of milk would soar 90 per cent. It said the cost to the U.S. economy would be $32 billion.
Last month, another study found that if all illegal workers were kicked out of New York state, 1,100 of its farms would go out of business or reduce their output significantly.
“Americans are hypocrites for going after supply management given their reliance on the undocumented workers that keep U.S. dairy prices artificially low,†said Taylor.
Taylor’s old boss, former trade minister Ed Fast, urged the Liberal government to use that “hypocrisy†to push back at the NAFTA bargaining table.
“The industry itself in the United States has admitted they wouldn’t be viable if they couldn’t use undocumented workers. This is a problem we don’t have in Canada,†said Fast in an interview."
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