T-TIP talks continue amid dim prospects for 2016
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5, 2016 - Optimism is quickly fading that
the U.S. and EU will be able to complete work on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(T-TIP) this year, even as negotiators from both sides of the Atlantic meet
this week in New York.
“There’s not enough coherence or cohesion to come together
with an overall agreement between now and the end of the year,” said David
Salmonsen, a senior director for congressional relations at the American Farm
Bureau Federation.
The U.S. and EU negotiators will be holding a briefing
Wednesday for industry stakeholders, but Salmonsen says he likely won’t attend
because of the lack of progress on agricultural issues.
Farm issues in the massive trade pact are some of the most
controversial that negotiators still have to iron out. They are a major factor
in the delays, but U.S. farm and trade group representatives say that just
because the deal doesn’t get done this year doesn’t mean it won’t get done.
“T-TIP really got going for us in … 2013, so the fact that
it’s gone on for several years and will continue through the next
administration is very normal,” Salmonsen said in an interview. “I think that’s
what everyone expects… given all the
political headwinds on both sides of the Atlantic. I’m sure they’ll pick this
up as soon as they can in the next administration when they have the people
appointed that take the top job.”
It’s very important to U.S. corn farmers that T-TIP is a
success, especially if negotiators manage to fix the European biotechnology
trait approval process that is close to being completely broken, said Floyd
Gaibler, director of trade policy
and biotechnology for the U.S. Grains Council.
U.S. negotiators
have proposed reforms for the EU process, but Gaibler said the industry has
seen very little progress in getting any response from the Europeans. The
Grains Council would also like to see a reduction in European tariffs, but
until the EU begins approving biotech traits, the tariffs are almost a moot
point.
“We’ve had a longstanding
issue with the inability of the European Union to approve biotech traits,”
Gaibler said. “It’s not only gotten worse, it’s become politicized as well.
It’s the biggest impediment that has harmed us in terms of cutting back our
access to this market.”
The EU is
supposed to have essentially a two-part review system for new biotech traits.
The first part is a scientific review by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)
and the second part is a final approval by a standing committee, which includes
representatives from all 28 member countries.
But it has never
worked out that way, said Gaibler. The EFSA reviews have grown longer and
longer over the last several years and the standing committee has never issued
an approval, instead kicking the decision up to an appeals committee or the
European Commission.
Ten years ago it
took EFSA an average of about 18 months to approve a new genetically modified
grain, he said. Now it takes more than four years.
The biotech
approval backlog has had a significant impact on U.S. corn exports to Europe,
Gaibler said. In 1990 the U.S. supplied about 95 percent of Europe’s corn
imports. Now that has dropped to about 2 percent.
The U.S. poultry
sector is also hoping that T-TIP can open up Europe to U.S. chicken exports,
but Jim Sumner, president of the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, has not
seen much progress in negotiations.
The EU has
virtually halted U.S. chicken imports because European countries ban the type
of antimicrobial rinses used by most U.S. producers to prevent salmonella
contamination.
Sumner predicts
this will be one of the most difficult issues to be resolved. And the most
difficult tasks are always saved for last, Farm Bureau’s Salmonsen said.
“I think that
everybody realizes that these things are difficult,” he said. “You always put
off the hard decisions to the end.”
What negotiators
should not do, though, is agree to some form of abbreviated T-TIP that
encompasses the easiest issues that can be resolved, Salmonsen said. Talk has
been circulating of a possible “T-TIP lite,” he said, and that would be a
mistake.
U.S. agriculture
wants to see a good deal and that means a comprehensive deal, Salmonsen said.
Two prominent
officials warning negotiators against such an action are House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady,
R-Texas, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Both
lawmakers agree that T-TIP is not likely to be done this year, despite hopes
expressed by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and European Trade
Commissioner Cecilia
Malmström.
“Even if they cannot be finished this year, we believe it is
essential to make progress and, by so doing, to create momentum for next year,”
Brady and Hatch said in a
letter they sent this week to Froman. “The United States has come to the
table prepared to negotiate a high-standard agreement, and we have the
political will to do so. Congress will not accept an abbreviated or
low-standard agreement simply because the Europeans have run out the clock. T-TIP
must be a single undertaking.”
The consequences of not getting a T-TIP agreement can be
seen in the numbers, said Gaibler. The U.S. ran a $12 billion agricultural
trade deficit with the EU in 2014, he said, comparing that to a $16 billion
agricultural trade surplus with the rest of the world.
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