Thank You, Canadians—We're With You

K. William Watson The Department of Agriculture has refused to comply with World Trade Organization rules even after U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations were conclusively determined to be incompatible with international trade obligations. In short, the U.S. law imposes dramatic and unwarranted costs on any American meat processors who buy foreign cattle. This is harmful to Canadian cattle raisers in a way that does not serve any public interest in the United States.  In preparation for possible retaliation to continued U.S. refusal to abide by the WTO decision, the Canadian government released today a list of U.S. goods for which it is considering raising tariffs in accordance with WTO rules. The goal of the tariffs would be to incentivize American industries that export to Canada to lobby Congress or the administration to remove the offending COOL regulations. This interplay is one of the clever ways that WTO dispute settlement furthers trade liberalization—by pitting competing special interests against each other. Unfortunately, the retaliation will prove costly to the Canadian people. Here are some of the goods that Canadians will now have to pay higher prices, so that some American bureaucrats can force other Americans to pay for useless information: cheese, not including the following: fresh (unripened or uncured) cheese, whey cheese, or curd; grated or powdered; processed cheese; blue-veined cheese or cheese containing veins produced by Penicilli...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs