WELLINGTON –
The New Zealand government said on Friday it had escalated its long-running trade dispute with Canada over access for its dairy products into the North American country.
New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay said his government had notified the Canadian government and other members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade agreement that it had triggered mandatory negotiations in the dairy dispute with Canada.
These now must begin within 15 days.
New Zealand launched a claim against Canada in May 2022, arguing that Ottawa’s implementation of dairy tariff rate quotas under the trade pact were against the agreement’s rules.
In particular, New Zealand claims that although Canada agreed to allow some dairy market access to foreign firms through a system of tariff-rate quotas, it was in fact improperly allocating some of them to domestic firms.
“As a matter …