URBANA, Ill. — Trade negotiators from Mexico and Canada will gather in Washington, D.C. this week to update NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Todd Gleason has more…
The Trump Administration wants to update the 1994 pact to include data transfer protections, ensure products produced in Mexico comply more closely with U.S. environmental and labor laws, and to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with the NAFTA countries. Traveling in the Midwest last week U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue voiced a much shorter list.
Perdue: Not all sectors have benefitted equally. We know that. Our vegetable and fruit producers in the south, whether it is in Texas or Florida have not done as well. But the grain guys up here have done very, very well. DDGs and other things are going well. We want to make sure that we do no harm. That’s been the message there. Trade negotiations are a wide portfolio including manufacturing as well as agriculture. My goal is to make sure (along with) U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and the President, that we do no harm to agriculture in those negotiations.
American agriculture has benefitted from opening the borders with Mexico and Canada. Mexico, until recently, was the number one importer of U.S. corn and the President of Illinois Farm Bureau, Richard Guebert, says it is imperative the trade agreement stays in place.
Guebert: Is that it stays in place and is tweaked. Sure, every trade agreement can be tweaked from time to time. And after 25 plus years I am sure there are areas that can be tweaked, but we cannot lose our best two trading partners Mexico and Canada.
The three trading partners will begin hammering out potential updates to NAFTA Wednesday.
— United States Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue
Richard Guebert – President of the Illinois Farm Bureau
Todd Gleason, farm broadcaster, University of Illinois Extension
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