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Missouri pork extremely pleased with Japan deal

The head of the Missouri Pork Association says there’s no doubt the U.S/Japan trade deal signed last week will help the state’s pork producers.  Don Nikodim says it will put in place tariff levels that would have been achieved in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Nikodim tells Brownfield Ag News, “It’s been a little longer in the making than we’d like but I think it’s extremely positive news for the pork industry and ag across the board. Japan, of course, is one of our key trading partners and they focus on the higher value cuts. In terms of dollar volume, they’ve traditionally been our highest dollar volume customer in the pork sector.”

Nikodim says the Japan deal is huge and lends itself well toward putting pressure on other trade deals moving forward, like the USMCA which he says is just sitting in Congress waiting to be ratified, “We think that the fact that Japan has signed, we think that puts additional pressure on China to get with the program and get something done there as well.”

Nikodim tells Brownfield that Japan has always had a convoluted tariff system for U.S. pork and he believes the new deal will smooth that out.