NAFTA Wineing

Add American winemakers to the list of businesses opposing U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement

Author of the article: Naomi Powell Published Sep 20, 2018

Add American winemakers to the list of businesses opposing U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement in favour of a bilateral deal with Mexico.

American vintners — whose sales north of the border soared 281 per cent under NAFTA and its predecessor, the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, — now count Canada as the largest single market for wine outside the U.S.

Michael Kaiser, vice president of WineAmerica
“If NAFTA no longer exists we could see a half a billion dollars thrown out the window,” said Michael Kaiser, vice president of WineAmerica, an industry group based in Washington, D.C. “So obviously we want to make sure the Canadian market remains open to U.S. wine.”

Charles Jefferson, vice president of federal and international public policy for the Wine Institute, an association of California vintners, was more blunt: “We would not support a withdrawal from NAFTA,” he wrote in an email. “We believe it is vital that any modernized NAFTA include Canada and Mexico.”

U.S. wine exports to Canada topped US $443.9 million in 2017, up from US$18.6 million when Canada first dropped tariffs on imports under the CUSFTA in 1989. By contrast, U.S. wine exports to Mexico were worth US$22.5 million in 2017.

Nevertheless, Canadian market restrictions have remained an irritant to the U.S. industry. American winemakers’ access to Canadian grocery store shelves was identified alongside dairy and grain grading as a major outstanding agricultural issue in the NAFTA talks when the U.S.’s chief agricultural negotiator Gregg Doud testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee last week.

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