Canada Blocks Pork Shipments from Smithfield Tar Heel, N.C., Plant

In the latest fallout from the trade war between President Donald J. Trump and Canada, the northern U.S. neighbor has blocked imports of pork from the largest pork processing plant in the U.S., Smithfield Foods’ Tar Heel, N.C., facility, according to reports.

Yesterday (Thu., March 6), President Trump announced a one-month delay on certain tariffs he planned to put on Canadian goods, and the war of words and retaliatory actions has escalated quickly. Social media reported yesterday that some Canadian stores had emptied their shelves of any and all U.S.-made liquor products, leaving those areas of the stores empty in protest of the tariffs on Canadian goods sent to the U.S.

U.S. agriculture groups had been concerned about the potential impacts of the president’s tariffs originally, when they were pitched as blanket tariffs on anything and everything coming from China, Mexico and Canada. Negotiations between President Trump and certain sectors of the economy have been on-again, off-again, with mixed results.

Smithfield was reportedly working with the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) to attempt to fix the problem, which pertained to “a limited number of certain offal shipments,” a company spokesperson told Reuters. The USDA had no comment to the media outlet. Canada was the fifth-largest export market for U.S. pork last year, the report noted.