Farmscape for May 5, 2016

The Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems says participation by the United States and Japan in the Trans-Pacific Partnership are key to the agreement moving forward.
The member nations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are deciding whether to accept or reject participation in the agreement.
Canada's Ministers of International Trade Chrystia Freeland and Agriculture and Agri-Food Lawrence MacAulay have both suggested, if the United States or Japan step out of the deal, it will have a major effect on ratification by the other countries.
Dr. Al Mussel, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems, suggests, if the deal doesn't move forward it will bring into question the credibility of multilateral trade negotiations.

Clip-Dr. Al Mussel-Agri-Food Economic Systems:
Of course in Canada we're currently in a phase of public consultations the government is holding to study and understand and determine Canadians interest in ratifying the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
My expectation is that Canada probably will or would ratify the Trans-Pacific agreement.
To me somewhat of a wild card is the U.S. made considerably more complicated by a very unusual and exciting presidential campaign this year.
I'm not quite sure how to make of it.
I recall the fact that NAFTA was campaigned vehemently against by candidate Bill Clinton and of course, when he became President, the U.S. ratified NAFTA so we could have something similar.
Japan is also in somewhat of a unique political circumstance and we do need both of them to ratify in order for TPP to go forward.

Dr. Mussel says if we are not able to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership to come into force then at some point, particularly people who are skeptical of these things will probably say, these multilateral trade negotiations just don't work so why do we even bother.
He says, if we can't get these deals ratified that's, a very logical question.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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