(Adds details on USTR agriculture initiatives)
By David Lawder
WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - More than 50 U.S.
agriculture and food groups on Thursday urged Congress to
approve new legislation enabling the United States to negotiate
more free-trade agreements, arguing that without them American
agriculture was falling behind global competitors.
The groups, representing a wide variety of U.S. agricultural
exports from corn to dairy, meat, fresh produce and other
products, said efforts by President Joe Biden's administration
to open new agriculture export markets were insufficient to
overcome the growing network of free-trade deals forged by the
European Union, China and other countries.
"Regrettably, America is falling badly behind. Between 2010
and 2020, China and the European Union enjoyed over twice as
much advantage from trade agreement tariff reductions as the
U.S.," the groups wrote.
The groups said it has been over a decade since a new free
trade deal was signed that opens new markets to U.S. farm and
food products.
They cited a recent Department of Agriculture forecast that
the U.S. is poised to become a net food importer in 2023, with
an expected food trade deficit of $14.5 billion.
"This should be a wake-up call regarding America's declining
economic influence in the world due to our failure to advance
new tariff reducing trade agreements," they wrote, asking
lawmakers to pass legislation for new Trade Promotion Authority.
TPA, or "fast track" negotiating authority, sets out
priorities for trade deals and allows the U.S. Trade
Representative's office to negotiate and execute them with only
an up-or-down vote by Congress. TPA was last used to renegotiate
a new North American trade agreement implemented in 2020, but
the authority expired in July 2021.
The Biden administration has indicated no interest in
renewing TPA or negotiating new comprehensive free trade
agreements with tariff reductions. Instead, U.S. Trade
Representative Katherine Tai has sought more limited trade
agreements focused on labor, environmental and digital trade
standards, such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and
industry-specific deals with the European Union on steel and
aluminum and aircraft.
Such efforts "can be highly constructive" if they address
specific non-tariff barriers to trade such as on food safety,
the groups said, but they added the U.S. should pursue "new
tariff-reducing free trade agreements."
The letter from the National Corn Growers Association, the
International Dairy Foods Association, the North American Meat
Institute and others comes as Tai starts her third year in
office, and expresses a level of frustration among exporters
about access to new markets.
The China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
trade deal in Asia came into force last year, five years after
the Trump administration pulled out of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade deal, which includes many of the same
countries. The group said this has helped China displace the
United States as the EU's biggest trading partner.
BEEF, SHELLFISH ACCESS
But the U.S. Trade Representative's office maintains
that it is working to open new markets for U.S. agricultural
goods, saying in a
fact sheet
on Wednesday that in the past year it has increased
opportunities for U.S. beef exports to Pakistan, reopened U.S.
shellfish exports to the European Union after a 10-year hiatus,
expanded export access for U.S. potatoes to Mexico and secured a
70% cut in Indian tariffs on U.S. pecans.
USTR is also pursuing trade dispute cases over dairy
access to Canada and genetically modified corn access to Mexico.
USTR
announced
on Thursday that it will hold an initial round of
negotiations toward a strategic trade and investment partnership
agreement with Kenya that will include an agricultural
component, as well as chapters on labor and regulatory
practices, environmental standards and digital trade.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Leslie Adler and David
Gregorio)
david.lawder.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
