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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Friday, March 07, 2025
Farm groups have grown accustomed over the last few years to having more money to work with for promoting their products overseas, but that abundance could come to an end quickly.
Lawmakers are signaling they may be ready to boost funding for ag promotion overseas, and farm groups are hungry for the dollars that they say increase foreigners' appetite for U.S.-grown food.
Four senators introduced a bill Friday to double funding for two popular ag export promotion programs that proponents say play a key role in boosting sales of U.S. cotton, meat, wheat, corn, soybeans and other farm commodities to foreign buyers around the globe.
The Biden administration has all but ruled out tariff-slashing market access deals when it comes to its proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, but the U.S. ag sector still hopes the agreement will include a trade pillar that boosts exports to rapidly growing markets that are home to a patchwork of regulatory restrictions and non-tariff trade barriers.
India’s subsidized wheat and rice stockpiling has made the country’s government a foe of U.S. wheat and rice farmers, but now the country’s prime minister is trying to use the farming crisis in Ukraine to justify its efforts to prop up domestic farmers by saying it could come to the rescue of grain-deprived countries.
Brazil is the third largest wheat-importing country in the world, and while it’s already a strong customer of the U.S., representatives of American farmers say there’s plenty of room for more business as they continue a campaign to win over more Brazilian millers and bakers who make the country’s bread, cookies, cakes and pasta.
President-elect Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail to reverse the Trump administration’s policy of breaking ties with Cuba, and that has U.S. farm groups once again hoping their farmers will benefit with increased trade.
China is again promising that it has made structural changes to its tariff rate quota system to import corn, wheat and rice, but it’s still not clear if that’s the case as the new deadline approaches for the U.S. to tell the World Trade Organization if it agrees.
U.S. wheat farmers continue to benefit from the ties between Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and U.S. President Donald Trump, which have only strengthened since the two first met at the White House last year.
Brazil has agreed to lift its ban on U.S. pork and make good on a 24-year-old promise to set up an annual 750,000-metric-ton tariff rate quota to allow in U.S. wheat, according to the leaders of the two countries.