Abbotsford, British Columbia – Every second day, 28,000 litres of raw milk leave Casey Pruim’s farm in Abbotsford in western Canada, entering a distribution system built on the assumption that the milk and the products made from it will have somewhere to go. While most is consumed in Canada, some had been sold across the border to the United States. Those sales have largely come to a standstill since US President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariff on $20bn in Canadian goods, including dairy products, came into effect on August 22.
Pruim, who is also chair of the British Columbia Dairy Association representing about 400 dairy farmers across the province, told Al Jazeera that Canadian farmers do not individually decide which products are exported. Instead, producers such as Pruim – whose farm has 330 cows milked three times a day – sell into the provincial milk-marketing system, which distributes milk to processors according to demand, including for products exported to the US. If a processor loses US demand, it may require less milk, with the impact then spread across the provincial pool.
Dylan Kruger, director of public affairs at BC Dairy, told Al Jazeera “there is still considerable uncertainty around the impact of the US tariffs”. He said it was too early to know how the industry would be impacted or whether milk no longer sold to the US could be sold elsewhere, mitigating financial losses. But the tariffs and wider trade tensions have already introduced uncertainty and instability for businesses.
Pruim said if processor demand is squeezed, farmers would be forced to dump the milk. In the worst-case scenario, the herd has to be cut. His warning captures dairy’s particular vulnerability in a tariff war: Milk is highly perishable, collected on a tight schedule and dependent on processors whose demand can change much faster than farmers can adjust production.
Dairy trade between Canada and the US has largely operated under a free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada, known as CUSMA in Canada. Canada manages the supply of dairy, poultry and eggs through a national agricultural policy known as supply management. The system uses production quotas and import controls, including tariffs, to provide farmers with more stable and predictable prices while maintaining domestic supply.
Critics describe the system as protectionist and as a government-backed cartel. Washington argues that Canada’s supply-management system restricts US dairy exports. Trump posted on Truth Social that “Canada had been ripping off the United States of America for years” and accused it of imposing “ridiculously high tariffs” that made life impossible for US farmers.
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