by exploited » Sun Jun 10, 2018 9:46 pm
America's primary problem is overproduction. You are dumping ~100-200 million gallons a year, and you have something like 10 million dairy cows. The reason why this happens is because the government is propping up the industry by providing the vast bulk of profits - literally around 70% of all dairy profit in the US comes from the taxpayer.
Here, we avoid overproduction by quotas. Demand is essentially the same as supply. The consequence is higher prices for consumers, and shutting out other countries, but there is very little waste, standards are high, farms are decently profitable, and we don't need to subsidize in the conventional ways you do.
So, in essence, both of us are subsidizing like crazy, both of us are unwilling to take a shit on farmers, etc.
If we could agree that America will end all subsidies to dairy farmers, and Canada would end supply management, we might get someplace with this. But neither option will come before the other. Thus, gridlock. Expecting Canada to open up dairy when you massively subsidize your own farmers is unreasonable - the same can be said in the other direction.
The proper course is negotiation led by reasonable adults who can slowly transition away from this situation. Trump is not being reasonable, nor is he an adult. To impose tariffs on the basis of national security, but actually because you're mad at the agreement YOU SIGNED is f**k.