The Canadians explicitly fix prices. In some ways, the Americans benefit from the Canadian market rate settings because our northern neighbors own such a large share of the production. In essence, we freeload as a producer industry on their price fixing. The Canadians also significantly subsidize their industry with Crown lands leases below market rates, and actual appropriations to spend on marketing. You can see this if you try to sell to Asia and some other areas. Sometimes clients will ask, “Your syrup is Canadian, isn’t it?” as though that is a mark of higher quality. Spending a few million dollars a year for a couple decades has been quite successful for them in this capacity.

As it is now, perhaps these contradictory influences roughly cancel each other out for American producers. If the Canadians were to significantly increase the subsidies, however, one could imagine a proceeding to establish a tariff on Canadian syrup. It’s an unlikely prospect at present, but one that should be considered when talking about the prospect of additional large industry supports.