WASHINGTON, Oct 5: The US Trade Representative soon will lodge a World Trade Organization complaint protesting Canadian Wheat Board practices, Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said on Friday.

Earlier this year, USTR warned it was considering such a move, complaining Canada’s monopoly grain exporter was engaging in illegal trade practices.

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick on Thursday met with a group of senators to discuss the Canadian Wheat Board and an unrelated US-Canada dispute on softwood lumber trade.

At that meeting, The administration pledged to immediately initiate a WTO case against the Canadian Wheat Board, Baucus said in a prepared statement. Baucus was one of a handful of senators attending the meeting with Zoellick.

A USTR spokesman said the agency has some technical issues to wrap up, in consultation with the US wheat industry, and we are trying to resolve these issues so we can proceed with a WTO case.

The spokesman repeated USTR’s position that the CWB is monopolistic, unfair and distorts the market.

A Senate source, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that Zoellick said the complaint would be filed with the WTO as soon as possible. They have the paper ready. There will be action within the next several days.

If a WTO panel were to find the CWB export practices illegal, it could force Canada to change the way wheat is marketed or face sanctions. But a decision could be a year or so away.

For years, North Dakota wheat farmers, who compete with growers on the other side of the border, have complained that the Canadian wheat is unfairly subsidized and that the CWB, as the marketer of western-grown wheat, uses predatory pricing and other schemes to capture markets in the United States and abroad.

The CWB has consistently denied the accusations.

On separate tracks, the US Commerce Department is set to decide by Oct 23, whether to launch an investigation of US industry allegations that the CWB is dumping illegally subsidized durum and hard red spring wheat in the United States. Any such probe could lead to punitive duties.

On a broader front, the United States is proposing in global trade negotiations that state-trading enterprises such as the CWB be dismantled.—Reuters