ALBERTA, Canada (RFD News) — The U.S. Department of Commerce is imposing new tariffs on Canadian mushroom imports after determining Canadian growers benefited from unfair government subsidies.
The new duties could reach up to five percent and follow a petition from American mushroom producers calling for penalties and an anti-dumping investigation.
Critics of the move argue the Canadian tax exemptions being targeted are similar to policies already available to U.S. farmers.
Kelvin Heppner with RealAg Radio says the exemptions apply broadly across Canadian agriculture and are comparable to tax policies used in the United States.
“The allegation here is that Canada’s mushroom producers are subsidized. They’re pointing to sales tax exemptions that apply to all of agriculture. It’s a very similar tax policy to what the U.S. farmers have. It looks like a protectionist effort to protect the U.S. mushroom-producing area that’s highly concentrated in Pennsylvania.”
The tariffs come as Canada’s mushroom sector continues reporting growth, with a significant share of production moving into the U.S. market.
Executive Vice President of Canadian Mushroom Growers’ Association Ryan Koeslag says using the tax exemption as justification for tariffs is unusual given the similarities between the two countries’ policies.
“They’re the same in the United States as they are in Canada. We’ve always been operating under the rules and regulations of the free and fair trade between Canada and the US. And so, the reason that they identified this, I think, is really because they’ve not been able to find anything else.”
Ontario and British Columbia account for most of Canada’s mushroom production, with roughly 40 percent of annual output exported to the United States.
