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Facing relocation of their offices and jobs, employees of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture joined their USDA colleagues at the Economic Research Service by voting today to form a bargaining unit with the American Federation of Government Employees.

The U.S. and Mexico are lauding an agreement struck Friday to prevent new tariffs, but the tenuous pact relies on Mexico’s ability to decrease immigration to the U.S. and does not include some form of promise for Mexico to import more U.S. ag commodities.

President Donald Trump heads to Iowa this week to shore up his rural base and promote the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, fresh from dropping a threat to impose new tariffs that farm groups and lawmakers feared could jeopardize congressional approval of the North American trade pact.

The United States and Mexico have reached a deal to avoid a 5% tariff on Mexican goods that was set to go into effect on Monday.

A bipartisan group of senators joined some Corn Belt farm groups in appealing to the Agriculture Department to ease restrictions on haying and grazing of cover crops that farmers will plant on acreage they were unable to sow to corn or soybeans this year.

USDA’s top lawyers have confirmed that unplanted crop acreage will be ineligible for trade assistance payments under the Market Facilitation Program, a government official tells Agri-Pulse.

The Department of Agriculture has not made a compelling case for moving the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture outside of Washington, D.C., two ag scientists and a farmer told a House Agriculture subcommittee Wednesday.

Many new genetically engineered crop traits would be exempt from regulation by the Agriculture Department under a sweeping rewrite of its rules for testing and assessing the products.

Heath Tarbert, a senior Treasury Department official and a legal specialist in international financial markets, was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday to be a member and chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.