Trade

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The U.S. ethanol industry is fighting to maintain its record-setting growth despite the oil industry’s continuing attacks and the surge in global protectionism that threatens American exports of the corn-based biofuel.

Cotton growers say their new farm program payments will provide badly needed income support without the threat of foreign retaliation that forced them to give up their old policy.

When China announced last week that it was taking aim at U.S. sorghum exports, it was widely seen as retribution for U.S. trade aggression. But the new Chinese anti-dumping investigation also fits into a wider pattern of efforts to dig the Asian country out of its massive stockpiles of corn.

Mexican sugar farmers, U.S. refiners and the U.S. food sector have a lot riding on the current efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

China is the largest foreign buyer of U.S. agricultural commodities, and the Trump administration’s increasingly antagonistic trade tactics have farmers and ranchers here bracing for retaliation.

It may not be fair to put so much pressure and responsibility on Gregg Doud, but much of the U.S. ag sector is counting on the farm economist from Kansas to be their chief trade negotiator and help prevent the dissolution of vitally important trade pacts and open up lucrative new markets across the globe.