Trump Wants Canada's Market Wide Open. Americans Already Snuck In $311 Million of Chicken Illegally.

By The Decision Room

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It's the least glamorous product in this whole trade war: "spent fowl" — retired egg-laying hens, sold cheap for soup stock, allowed into Canada completely tariff-free. For years, American shippers have quietly used that one narrow exemption to sneak in ordinary broiler chicken — the same protected meat Canada taxes heavily — relabeled on the paperwork as old laying hens. Canadian border authorities have assessed close to $311 million in duties, penalties, and interest tied to this exact scheme since 2017. They've actually collected about $3.2 million — roughly a 1% collection rate. Last year alone, Canada imported over 113 million kilograms of chicken labeled as spent fowl from the US — a volume Chicken Farmers of Canada says vastly exceeds what the American egg industry could realistically produce as genuine retired hens. This is happening at the exact moment Canada and the US are sitting down for the CUSMA review — where Washington's central complaint is that Canada's supply-manag

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