Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Saturday that the Biden administration has no plans to intervene to stop a dockworker strike, and he also urged lawmakers to “get practical” in their farm bill negotiations.
Some 56 agricultural groups asked the White House this week to help prevent a potential strike shutting down East and Gulf coast port operations on Tuesday. If port operations stop, “the impact on the ag supply chain will quickly reverberate throughout agriculture and not only slow or shut down operations, but also potentially lower farmgate prices," the groups said in a letter.
The administration is urging the International Longshoremen’s Union and United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) to reach an agreement, Vilsack told reporters Saturday in a call from Italy where he attended a meeting of G7 agriculture ministers this week.
The administration believes “the best resolution of any labor dispute is when the parties sit down at the bargaining table and essentially hammer out the differences that they may have," he said.
If a strike does occur, “then we're going to figure out ways in which we can be as helpful as we can. But for now, the message is quite clear, stay at the table, continue to bargain and get it worked out,” Vilsack said.
USMX represents container carriers, marine terminal operators and port associations.
He also noted that the affected ports are generally less crucial for U.S. agricultural exports than West Coast ports.
The farm groups said in their letter that about 40% of U.S. containerized agricultural shipments move through the East and Gulf coast ports.
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On the farm bill, Vilsack said lawmakers “either have to lower their expectations or raise resources, and if they’re going to raise resources, they have to do it in a way where they don’t lose votes, where they actually gain votes.”
Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees have said they hope to get agreement on a farm bill that can be considered by Congress after the Nov. 5 elections, but they still face a significant funding issue. The bill the House Agriculture Committee advanced in May has a funding shortfall of $33 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The House Ag bill also relies on taking money from the nutrition title, a move unacceptable to Democrats, and the legislation also would suspend USDA’s Section 5 spending authority through the Commodity Credit Corporation. The CCC authority was used to compensate farmers for the impact of retaliatory tariffs the COVID-19 pandemic during the Trump administration, and the Biden administration tapped the CCC to pay for the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative.
“One way [to fund the farm bill] is that you actually find more money. You close a loophole here or there in terms of the taxes or whatever, and you generate more revenue, and you have that revenue directly offset the increase in the farm bill. … That's the correct way to do it. And that's, frankly, the way Sen. Stabenow is approaching the farm bill,” Vilsack said, referring to Senate Ag Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
Stabenow hasn't publicly disclosed the source of about $5 billion that she said is available to be moved into the farm bill.
The other way to fund the bill is to override the CBO estimates, Vilsack said.
“I fear that when you do that, then essentially, you potentially risk the loss of votes, which is, I think, why we haven't seen that bill that passed through the House Ag Committee quite some time ago … be put on the calendar, not even be put up for a vote. They just don't have the votes,” Vilsack said.
While in Italy, Vilsack said he had a number of side conversations with his counterparts on various trade concerns, including EU moves to prevent deforestation and to require additional testing for meat products.
Vilsack told his EU counterparts that the deforestation regulations need to account for the fact that the U.S. isn’t destroying forests to expand cropland.
With his Japanese counterpart, Vilsack discussed “expanded access to their market for our table potatoes, and the important work that we can do collaboratively together to expand Japan's utilization of ethanol and biofuels, and the important work that needs to be done for us to embrace sustainable aviation fuel.”
Vilsack said he also pushed back on the EU’s ongoing efforts to protect the use of geographic indications, product names such as parmesan and feta cheese.
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