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OTTAWA — The pressure on the Liberals to loosen protections around Canada’s dairy sector took new focus on Sunday as the key stumbling block in North American Free Trade Agreement talks came under scrutiny and spin on political talk shows on both sides of the border.

A member of an influential Congressional panel — and a Donald Trump supporter — said in a Canadian interview that providing American dairy farmers with more access to the Canadian market may appease the president.

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To the south, Trump’s agriculture secretary suggested deeper concessions would be coming from the Canadians over Canada’s system of managing supply and prices in the dairy sector.

Photo by Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Republican Tom Reed, a member of the House ways and means committee, said Trump doesn’t necessarily want the Liberals to get rid of the system, but simply to remove what the Americans see as trade barriers.

“Many have seen this market over the last few decades, from an American point of view, as just being off the table,” Reed said in an interview with Global’s “The West Block” that aired Sunday morning.