After spending four years under the Trump Administration and talking almost non-stop about trade, the Biden Administration has not only backed off the discussions but seemingly ground them to a screeching halt. Last week, USTR Katherine Tai talked with her Chinese counterpart and never once brought up progressing on the next stages of a bilateral trade agreement. An agreement that sees the commitments under the first phase wrapping up very soon. Many ag groups have been urging the President to move forward on trade, or at the very least give them a gameplan on what his administration plans to do.
Last week, Farmers for Free Trade held a roundtable discussion with representatives from all across agriculture. The message from the meeting was clear, the U.S. cannot be lax on trade and allow our competitors to gain the upper hand.
During the Farmers for Free Trade roundtable talk, participants heard from the National Pork Producers Association?s Immediate Past-President Howard ?A.V? Roth. He said that now is the time to be finding export market opportunities.
Dairy was represented at the meeting by Michigan dairy farmer and chair of the Michigan Milk Producers Association, Doug Chapin. He says that we haven?t had a complete trade agreement negotiated since USMCA. We only have partial agreements with China and Japan, trade pacts with the EU & the UK are both in limbo.
National Corn Growers Association board member Deb Gangwish added that getting these trade deals goes beyond supporting the farmer?s bottom line, it helps benefit the whole industry across the board.
The global marketplace is highly competitive, and trade pacts are fundamental at the bilateral, regional, and global levels. The longer we drag our feet, the more opportunity there is for a Brazil, Ukraine, or Australia to swoop in and grab our market shares. If there isn?t demand for American products, the price structure will collapse around a bloated supply. Farmers would be back to the low prices we saw just a few years ago. Many family farms can not survive a scenario like that.
