I'll try to be brief here. Thanks for the opportunity.
My name is Tyler Fulton. I am a beef producer from Birtle, Manitoba. I am currently serving as the president of the Canadian Cattle Association.
Through our provincial members, we represent about 60,000 beef producers. In total, the Canadian beef industry contributes about $34 billion annually to Canada’s GDP and supports about 347,000 full-time jobs.
The North American beef sector is highly integrated. To give you an example, you might have a calf that is born in the United States, raised in Canada and then shipped back to the United States for processing, or vice versa. This integration has built supply chains that are not only efficient but resilient. They are benefiting producers, processors and consumers in both countries.
I can give you more examples on integration. A critical factor behind our integrated success is the unlimited duty-free access for Canadian and U.S. beef established under the 1989 free trade agreement, carried forward through NAFTA and now CUSMA. Cattle and beef flow in two directions over the border without the impediment of tariffs.
We did get a brief experience with the U.S. tariffs in March before the USMCA compliance exemption was announced. The tariff cost $40,000 per load of cattle and added up to $800,000 for one producer alone in two days. The total annual tariffs collected would have cost the industry $500 million and likely driven Canadian cattle prices down by about 15%.
Most critically, the U.S. is the most important market for the cattle industry. While diversification is also a critical part of export-driven sectors, it's important to realize that all other markets combined cannot replace the U.S. market for our industry, given the integrated supply chains.
We are expanding trade into Asia. We are very optimistic about the growth potential for high-quality grain-fed beef in the Indo-Pacific region. In particular, Japan and Vietnam are some of the fastest-growing markets. We've benefited from the CPTPP agreement, which has provided preferential access. South Korea has the potential—