Farm groups promise to keep fighting for TPP trade deal
WASHINGTON, June 15, 2016 - Representatives of the U.S.
agriculture sector say they will keep on fighting to build support in the
country and on Capitol Hill for the Trans-Pacific Partnership despite a lack of
enthusiasm for their efforts among many members of Congress.
“We’re not going to give up,” Minnesota Farm Bureau
Federation President Kevin Paap told Agri-Pulse after a two-hour
House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing on agricultural trade. “This is too
important to agriculture … not to continue to push.”
Paap, who testified during the hearing, said he realizes
that he and other farm leaders were up against a Congress that doesn’t seem
willing to hold a vote this year on the 12-nation trade deal, but he’s still
holding out hope.
Several members of the trade subcommittee, including
Chairman Dave Reichert, R-Wash, professed support for the TPP, but leaders
in both the House and Senate have been pessimistic about getting a vote on the
trade pact this year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Agri-Pulse in
April that the prospects of a vote this year looked “bleak.”
In his testimony, Paap stressed that the trade deal involving the U.S.,
Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru,
Singapore and Vietnam may boost net farm income by $4.4 billion annually thanks
to steep reduction in tariffs and the removal of sanitary and phytosanitary
barriers.
The benefits alone from Japan’s TPP promises will be a
massive boon for U.S. pork exports, National Pork Producers President John
Weber told lawmakers. The country is already the most valuable foreign market
for U.S. pork producers – worth about $1.58 billion in 2015 – and that’s
despite Japan’s steep tariffs.
Dale Foreman, chairman of the Washington-based Foreman Fruit
Company, told lawmakers they must pass TPP because of the
tariff reductions that will benefit American apples, pears, cherries and other
fruit.
Vietnam is the sixth-largest foreign market for U.S. apples
despite the 10 percent tariff the country imposes and the competition with
Australia and New Zealand, neither of which is subject to the tariff. If the
TPP is ratified, Foreman said, Vietnam would completely lift the 10 percent
levy.
Reichert agreed with the witnesses that TPP would be a
significant help to American farmers, but he also expressed concerns about the
government’s ability to enforce provisions of the deal.
“The TPP agreement also holds great promise. It would
eliminate or significantly reduce tariffs and quotas for agricultural exports
to the fastest growing region in the world,” Reichert said.
“However, trade agreements must be done right and must be
fully implemented and enforced to benefit America’s agricultural producers.”
Reichert said he was particularly concerned about Canada not living up to its
pledge to increase access to U.S. dairy exports.
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