Trade

RSS

India is buying more California walnuts than it ever has, but West Coast farmers see a vast potential for even more trade as they wrap up a new media campaign in the Asian giant that is home to 1.3 billion people.

The U.S. was one of nine countries critical of the European Union last year when it unveiled a plan to tax imports based on their carbon footprint, but that was under the Trump administration. Now the Biden administration is signaling a stronger kinship to the EU’s push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on an international scale.

President Joe Biden is expected this week to issue a pledge to slash America’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, and he'll host a global climate summit where world leaders will be watching to see how far he’ll go to ensure the commitment is met.

Some of the most vocal criticisms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was that it did not include provisions to address climate change. It’s a view that U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Thursday that she shares and went on to provide rationale for making environmental protection a much bigger factor in future of trade policy.

Some ag exporters have complained that they can’t get their products into containers or that the filled containers are sitting at port, incurring fees and risking spoilage, because shippers are sending empty containers back to Asia so they can be filled with imports and sent back to the U.S. as fast as possible.

Mexico’s Supreme Court refused last week for the second time in six weeks to make a ruling that could allow substantial new access to the Mexican market worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually for U.S. potatoes, fueling Mexican farmers' determination to continue their fight against the trade.

Some 300 corporations, including some industry giants in the agriculture and food industry, are calling on President Joe Biden to commit the U.S. to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels.

U.S. farmers, government officials and academics told the International Trade Commission that unfair Mexican trade had caused steep losses in domestic vegetable markets, an accusation countered by representatives of Mexican exporters.

The Philippines, already a big importer of U.S. pork, is lowering its tariffs to allow for more foreign supplies as the country continues to battle African swine fever, according to an announcement made Wednesday by the National Pork Producers Council.