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Dairy Export Council seeks TPP replacements

U.S. dairy industry leaders are optimistic President Trump’s administration can negotiate new bilateral trade deals to replace the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Shawna Morris with the U.S. Dairy Export Council tells Brownfield establishing a good trade deal soon is vital.  “Our competitors have been very quickly negotiating with a lot of those Asian markets, and if we continue to fall behind, that’s going to create pretty harmful consequences for our exporters.”

The Council called TPP “far from perfect” but supported it because it would have benefited the U.S. dairy sector.  Morris says many of those specific elements can be part of a new trade deal.  “Such as issues related to sanitary and phytosanitary commitments or geographical indications where we can hopefully harvest prior work and to move forward that much more quickly.”

President Trump also plans to re-open NAFTA, which Morris says has been successful in Mexico but a failure in Canada.  “We’re building upon what’s worked well and really focussing in on what is not working well.  We do have experience with that unfortunately with the Canadians and dairy where they have habitually disregarded their commitments to us.”

Morris says it’s important to U.S. dairy producers to establish fair trade deals, which are important to American jobs.

It’s unknown if countries that signed on to TPP are willing to make new agreements with the United States.

130 farm organizations signed on to a letter urging the President to reach trade agreements to improve the U.S. position in the world markets.

 

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