34 hundred pork producers in Minnesota raise 18 million pigs per year.

Kevin Estrem, the Past President of Minnesota Pork, says there's 127 countries the US can do trade with and Minnesota producers are hopeful the Trump administration will expand the ability to export product.

Kevin Estrem-Minnesota Pork

President Trump has some different ideas in play as far as our exports and not only Minnesota but the US depends on a lot of exports to overseas countries and Mexico and even into Canada.

Our goal is, hopefully things can settle down a little bit and he can see forward with our obligations to produce a safe and healthy product for many people of the world.

We are dependant on the exports to really make a livelihood out of this industry.

From Canada's side, we bring a lot of pigs from Canada into Minnesota and surrounding states so, without that ability I think Canada's pig economy would hurt and that would hurt us because we depend on those pigs coming into the US also so I think it would be devastating if we had something happen where we could not cross sides.

Mr Estrem notes the US pork industry is already producing to the capacity of consumers to use that product so, with additional pork processing capacity coming on line, there will be that much more pork product entering the system.

He says, unless new export markets are found, producers will end up taking lower prices for the product.