After withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, President Trump’s top trade objective is renegotiation of the 23-year-old U.S.-Canada-Mexico agreement known as NAFTA. Farm groups speaking for U.S. hog and turkey farmers told a House Agriculture subcommittee that their industries could suffer greatly if exports are disrupted.
The groups raised their concerns on the same day Trump, in a National Agriculture Day proclamation, said “agriculture will be an important consideration” as the administration “fights for better trade deals.” The administration plans to trigger re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement through a notification to Congress later this month, which would mean discussions would begin later in the year.
More than a quarter of U.S. pork production and 10 percent of turkey production is exported, with Mexico as the leading customer. Overall, Canada is the second-largest and Mexico the third-largest market for U.S. farm exports, which generate 20 percent of farm income.
“And while interruption in any one market would be troublesome, it would be catastrophic if it were a disruption in trade with Mexico and/or Canada,” said David Herring, vice president of the National Pork Producers Council. “This should be kept in mind when considering ‘modernization’ of the North American Free Trade Agreement.”
The National Turkey Federation also said it supported NAFTA. Mexico is the destination for half of U.S. turkey- meat exports, said NTF chairman Carl Wittenburg. “As an industry that relies on healthy and productive trade relationships, we in the turkey business would be severely impacted if access to this market were in any way damaged.”
The pork council recommended that pork trade among the three NAFTA members remain tariff-free.
Also during the Agriculture subcommittee hearing on livestock issues for the 2018 farm bill, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry Association and the pork council called for “a more adequate” storehouse of vaccine in case of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, an infectious viral disease of cloven-hoofed livestock. They requested $150 million a year for five years to stockpile 10 million doses of vaccine — enough to treat animals during the first two weeks of an epidemic — and to contract for at least 40 million additional doses if needed.
“An outbreak today of the disease, which was last detected in the United States in 1929, likely would cripple the entire livestock sector,” said the pork council. Foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in Africa.
To read the written statements by witnesses or to watch a video of the subcommittee hearing, click here.