Lighthizer warning: Buy GMOs or expect a fight
The Trump administration will attack overseas regulations that restrict the export of GMO crops and other products resulting from American technological innovation, said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at the first meeting of a newly created task force on rural America.
U.S. senators push Trump officials for fair trade in dairy to Canada
With Robert Lighthizer now at work as U.S. trade representative, the leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee asked the Trump administration to push for fair trade in ultra-filtered milk sales to Canada.
Senate confirms Lighthizer as U.S. trade representative
On a bipartisan 82-14 vote, senators confirmed trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer as U.S. trade representative, helping to complete President Trump's team of officials responsible for revamping U.S. trade agreements worldwide. The vote could open the door to renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump to spell out plans for TPP and NAFTA, farm groups react
President-elect Donald Trump, selecting a China critic as U.S. Trade Representative, "will further lay out some of the exact ways" that he will pull out of TPP and seek to re-write NAFTA once he takes office, a spokesman said. The aim of these moves will be to shrink the trade deficit, expand economic growth, strengthen U.S. manufacturing and stop jobs from moving overseas, spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.
Another USDA possibility emerges, along with a candidate for USTR
Texas rancher Susan Combs, the first woman elected as state agriculture commissioner and a former state comptroller, was to meet Vice President-elect Mike Pence, said the Trump transition team. The move ignited speculation that Combs might be in line for USDA chief.
U.S. accuses China, its biggest ag customer, of unfair farm subsidies
China is the largest buyer of U.S. farm exports and also the target of 14 of 23 world trade complaints filed by the Obama administration. In a new case, the United States accuses China of paying unfairly large subsides to corn, wheat and rice growers, distorting the world market and hurting U.S. farmers.