Thanks, Bob.
Going into this negotiation, as Bob laid out, we kind of liked NAFTA the way it was. It was good for us. We had good, unlimited access to the United States. There were a few little issues here and there, but for the most part, we went into that negotiation with the objective of keeping the tariff-free, quota-free access that we had. We've heard about the U.S. putting tariffs on things, so we were glad to see that was achieved.
We wanted to keep the rules of origin the way they are, that as long as the animals are processed in the NAFTA zone, the beef is able to benefit from the NAFTA provisions. We wanted to resist efforts to bring the mandatory country-of-origin labelling back in the U.S., which cost us billions of dollars between 2008 and 2015. We were glad for that U.S. law to go by the wayside in 2015. There were definitely efforts in the U.S. to seek to bring that requirement back into the NAFTA, so we're glad to see that it was resisted and did not make it as part of the result.
Also, related to the COOL and other issues, we have been a user of the dispute settlement provisions in NAFTA and the WTO. We want to make sure those provisions remain strong. We were glad to see those stay in there.
There were a few things that we wanted to see as regulatory improvements, more related to the efficiency of the border transaction, whether that's for sending live cattle or for beef across the border. Technically, those wouldn't necessarily be things in the agreement but where we ended up with.... There was some discussion about putting in a meat annex that would have some provisions or commitments related to improving those procedures.
In the end, that wasn't in there, but there are commitments and structures in terms of regulatory co-operation that we were glad to see in there. I think overall we're happy with the result, and we would like to see NAFTA 2.0 ratified as quickly as possible.