Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
Or you know, all about making up whatever at a moments notice.
Canada doesn’t actually impose tariffs on Dairy, rather it uses a supply management system to keep prices stable for both producers and consumers. The US, on the other hand let’s producers sell for whatever they want but gives them massive subsides on the back end to keep them viable in spite of selling their product at a loss.
The US system results in lower prices but also overproduction which is why the US has a surplus in Dairy trade overall. Canadian producers can’t compete with the subsidized prices of US producers on items that are not part of Canada’s supply management system.
In the absence of both supply management and subsidies the big winner is likely Western Canadian producers. Western Canada has much larger farms for better economies of scale and generally optimise for low cost over intensity. On unsubsidised unprotected trade they can almost always produce at a lower cost than the US or Eastern Canada.
Correction: Canada imposes very large tariffs on dairy after a certain import quota is met, between 201% and 313% (source.)
What Canada doesn't do is provide direct government subsides to dairy, which can result in massive oversupply problems like the ones currently being experienced in the US. (Apparently the US dairy industry dumped more unsold milk last year than Canada produced.) The Canadian dairy market has supply-side management, which works out well for producers but not so much for consumers, since they foot the bill for both the production and the producers' apparently generous profits.
