For nearly two decades, the United States has imported more agricultural products from Europe than it exports to the continent. The trade deficit reached a record $12 billion last year, says the Foreign Agricultural Service, when imports totaled $25 billion and exports were half of that, at $13 billion.
Americans have an appetite for high-value European goods. U.S. sales are pinched by the strong dollar and low commodity prices. “At the same time, U.S. exports are disadvantaged by market access restrictions on a number of our most competitive commodities and higher tariffs than countries which enjoy preferential market access privileges with the EU,” says the USDA agency, arguing that negotiations for a U.S.EU free trade agreement “provide an opportunity to correct these imbalances.”
The European Union is the world’s largest importer of food and agricultural goods and the United States is its second-largest supplier, after Brazil. But the U.S. market share, at 10 percent in 2015, is down from 17 percent in 1995. The EU import market doubled in size in the past two decades. Consumer-oriented products accounted for $7 billion of the U.S. ag exports to Europe last year, an array of items that included nearly $3 billion in almonds, walnuts and other tree nuts and more than $900 million worth of wine, beer and distilled spirits.