agricultural exports

President-elect Donald Trump, who declared, "I am a tariff man," in 2018, selected Jamieson Greer, an important figure in the Sino-U.S. trade war, to serve as U.S. trade representative (USTR) in his second term. Trump announced the choice during a string of days in which he threatened high import duties on a dozen countries, including Canada, Mexico, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.

Former president Donald Trump said in a questionnaire released on Thursday that he would use “every tool at my disposal,” including tariffs, to expand U.S. food and ag exports if he is re-elected. Vice President Kamala Harris would not tolerate unfair trade practices from China or other competitors, said senior aides to the Democratic nominee.

China was less than $500 million ahead of Mexico as the leading customer for U.S. food and ag exports as the fiscal year entered its final months, according to USDA data released Wednesday. The agricultural trade deficit, forecast to set a record this year, was already at $18.8 billion, with three months to go.

U.S. food and ag exports to China will fall by $6 billion this fiscal year in the biggest slump in sales since the Sino-U.S. trade war, forecast the Agriculture Department on Wednesday. Mexico and Canada will surpass China as the top customers, while the agricultural trade deficit will widen to $32 billion.

Despite a pledge in early 2020 to do so, China has not shortened the average time — more than two years — that it takes to decide whether to approve agricultural biotechnology products for import, said the Biden administration in an annual review. The slow-moving process disrupts U.S. farm exports and the commercialization of new strains of corn, soybeans, canola, and alfalfa, said the report from the U.S. trade representative's office (USTR).

After decades of pursuing sales to foreign buyers, the U.S. crop sector is “once again becoming domestic market-focused, due mainly to biofuels policy,” said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, on Wednesday. It would be a significant, albeit gradual, change in focus.

Already the world's leading soybean and corn supplier, Brazil is on track to pass the United States and become the largest cotton exporter in the very near future," said the National Cotton Council, an umbrella organization for the U.S. cotton industry.

In a bid to break the farm bill deadlock, Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow said that she was “open to proposals” to increase so-called effective reference prices for all crops in the U.S. farm program but would not accept cuts in SNAP or climate funding. “If we’re going to get a farm bill done this spring to keep farmers farming, it’s time to get serious,” she said in a letter to all senators.

In the past decade, Brazil has improved its network of roads, railways, and ports, “significantly altering” its competitiveness with the United States in the world soybean market, said an Agriculture Department report on Thursday. Continued improvements would bolster Brazil’s standing as the world’s largest soybean producer and exporter.

U.S. food and ag exports are concentrated in four markets that generate nearly $6 of every $10 in sales, said two senior U.S. ag trade officials on Thursday. To expand sales volume, they said at a trade group meeting, new customers must be developed in countries that have been off the export radar in the past.