rkaiser said:

Tommy, and any other Rcalfer that will listen. I personally could give a rats a** if the border opens or not. I have my home front looked after except for my cull cows and a depressed bull market. I fight for Canadian independence and Canadian owned Packing capacity on th public side of the ledger.
I simply cannot understand your continued fight to stop the border from opening. I have yet to hear anything rational from any of you to back this fight. Short term price spikes may help a poor old boy like Oltimer get rid of his culls so his grandchildren get a wee little bigger inheritance, but what about the Rcalf boys that are in this for another 10 or 20 or 30 years. Look into the crystal ball for a moment. The future is Global. You don't want all of America to be left behind do you?
Randy, you are right, the future is global. The writing is on the wall - more foreign beef will be coming to the US. All should not be gloom and doom as the opening of borders is supposed to work both ways. However, that is not what is happening. R-CALF is the only cattleman's organization that seems to notice and care that all of the free trade agreements that we have done lately and are in the process of doing are with beef exporting countries, not importing ones. They also have pointed out that while our tariffs are next to nothing on what we import, we are going against an average tariff of over 80% on our exports. That is EXACTLY why I support R-CALF. Canada is just one highly visible battle in the war to make this free trade deal fair.
I think you and I have the AMI and USDA pegged about the same. We both know how the AMI is leaning on the USDA (and CCA, for that matter) to achieve their goals. Both sides have said that the Canadian border issue will be precedent setting and will influence how the US trades for years to come. I don't want the precidence to be that AMI's profitabilty trumps all else, and that is what the Canadian border issues boils down to.
If the ball gets dropped here, the US cattleman will really be swimming upstream if they want a voice in trade issues that could make or break them.
As a R-CALF member, I harbor absolutly NO ill will to Canadian producers. I hope you guys make it and prosper. I sincerely do. You made the statement that R-CALF is kicking Canadians in the rocks while the AMI holds you down. I see it as the AMI using you folks to knock us
over the head to beat us into submission, and it's certainly worth $50 to me to for someone to stand up and call them out.
I'll say it one more time - the AMI is the root of the problems for both of us. A lot of money, a lot of power, and an agenda that is not the same as producers.