The U.S. Trade Representative’s top agricultural negotiator says the recent USMCA agreement improves access to Canadian dairy markets, but might not bring back demand for certain U.S. specialty products.

Gregg Doud says, “The market in Canada has changed as well, so our ability going forward to export things like ultra-filtered milk into Canada is probably not going to be what it once was because of investment that the Canadian dairy industry has made.”

Doud tells Brownfield dairy was never discussed in the original U.S. Canadian Free Trade Agreement or when NAFTA was signed in 1994.

Ultra-filtered milk sales to Canada dropped immediately when the Class 7 prices began, which caused U.S. dairies including Grassland in Wisconsin to stop taking milk from more than 70 farms.