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WTO: Billions In Tariffs For Country-Of-Origin Labeling Mandate

Robert Couse-Baker, flickr Creative Commons

Canada and Mexico are threatening to impose tariffs on more than one billion dollars worth of U.S. goods. As Harvest Public Media’s Jeremy Bernfeld reports, it’s in retaliation for labels on meat at the grocery store.

Your beef, pork and chicken has a little label on it that says where the animal it came from was born, raised and slaughtered. And Canada and Mexico blame that little label for a drop in demand for their products.

“Because there’s additional steps those international suppliers have to follow, they end up receiving a lower price for their product than their domestic counterpart," says Veronica Nie, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation.

That’s why the World Trade Organization announced Monday that the two countries can start charging an import tax for U.S. goods.

It’s not clear what products could be hit by the tariffs. But Mexico and Canada are the U.S.’s second- and third-largest trading partners.