US Trade Rep pushes partner nations to live up to agreements
Ag exports expand despite strong dollar
Written by Jonathan Eisenthal
US agricultural exports topped a value of $196 billion during the previous twelve months, the US Trade Representative’s Chief Agricultural Negotiator, Doug McKalip, told an audience at FarmFest. He compared this to export sales of $137 billion five years ago, and said the growth had come despite a strong US dollar and many challenging tariff laws in place in our destination markets.
“We need to continue to put our foot on the gas pedal and continue to do everything that we can to open market access for your commodities around the globe,” McKalip said.
Pressure applied to trading partners has garnered successes, he reported.
Japan has opened its market to US beef, a $2.3 billion market. A change in ethanol policy makes Japan’s 200 million gallon-per-year road ethanol market available to US producers. Jordan has eliminated its tariff on fertilized eggs, making a $150 million market available to US poultry producers.
“The country of India has made eight changes in tariff policy this year,” McKalip said, noting that the world’s most populous country is a very important market for American farmers and will continue to grow as an export destination. “This is a tremendous opportunity for US producers. Earlier, this winter, India eliminated its tariff on industrial ethanol. They reduced their pecan tariff by 40 percent, and they made changes to tariffs on animal feed, which all benefit US producers.”
There is more work to be done in promoting fair trade. McKalip described cases the US Trade Representative has brought under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement to open up Canada’s dairy market and bring down barriers in Mexico against biotech products.
“We won in Nov. 2021, in a case relating to Canada’s openness to US dairy products,” McKalip said. “Unfortunately, Canada has not implemented meaningful changes. We are still not able to have full retail access for cheeses and milk products. …The efforts that the US Trade Representative and the Administration have been making have been to laser focus on those areas where Canada has fallen short in truly opening its market to US cheese and milk products.
“Mexico has decided in recent years that making proclamations and presidential decrees related to grain imports was something that would be popular with voters,” McKalip said. “Unfortunately, those presidential decrees have not followed science, and they have not been based upon the idea that a country’s decision to import or not import a product has to be based upon a risk assessment, and it has to be based upon sound science. US Trade Representative launched a dispute settlement process over its approach to biotech corn and other biotechnology products.”
One of the things that helps the US case is the unity of producers on these issues across all ag sectors.
“I have been very impressed,” McKalip told the audience at the Redwood County farm show. “I have met a lot of farmers as I have traveled across this country and as I have traveled internationally to meet with trading partners. Farmers will come up to me who are not even involved in the grain trade — we had an almond producer in California, some folks that were involved in poultry and eggs in Texas, and some others in specialty crops in Florida, and they came up to me and they said we really appreciate what you are doing on the Mexico biotech case, because if we allow countries to ignore science in this area, they may very well ignore it for my product. What this has shown me is that farmers in the US are unified across sectors, across livestock types, across grain and even specialty fruits and vegetables, to say that no one is going to mess with the US, and we are going to stick together until we see this through.”
The US Trade Rep continues to work on issues related to China, but McKalip notes that the entire eastern Pacific rim is a region that will repay the efforts of ag exporters and trade policy officials.
“As I was driving down form the Twin Cities this morning, I couldn’t help but think that almost every fourth row of soybeans I saw, and almost one out of every four rows of corn, in some shape or fashion, is destined for Chinese consumers.” McKalip said. “But, demographic data, growing middle class data, throughout Asia, shows us that there many countries throughout Southeast Asia, that can, should, and will be important markets for our products in the future. The Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand. All have growing middle classes who have a very strong interest in the things that Minnesota farmers are growing. That is the reason that reason that the Biden Administration launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. We have 12 countries that are part of the agriculture chapter. And that trade discussion is focused on getting much more transparency and reliability in trading protocols. To make sure that we don’t have disruptions in trade, to minimize overhead costs for exporting to those countries and to provide much better continuing market access throughout Asia.”
Similar approaches in Kenya and Taiwan are already being rolled out.
As climate change and other environmental issues become a stronger and stronger focus of national policy in countries around the globe, US farmers will need to account for those changing demands from end users, and McKalip said the federal government wants to play a supportive role, offering voluntary, incentive-based programs to help US farmers continue on their already positive trends in sustainable practices.
