The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) released an
economic analysis of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) today and dairy
industry officials eager to see USMCA's passage welcomed this key step in the
trade agreement approval process.
Tom Vilsack, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export
Council, said the ITC study is important because it moves the USMCA process
closer to ratification, a step urgently needed to secure trading conditions
with Mexico and usher in the improvements the agreement makes for U.S. exports.
"We shipped $1.4 billion in dairy products to Mexico
last year, which accounts for more than one-fourth of U.S. dairy exports,"
he said. "Without a trade treaty with Mexico in place, the dairy industry
would be hard pressed to maintain and expand these sales, as our competitors in
Europe are expected to implement a lucrative new trade arrangement with Mexico
by next year. Moreover, without USMCA we lose out on the new rules this deal
puts in place such as key reforms to Canada's dairy system. Congress must pass
USMCA to shore up our market in Mexico and harness the gains made in other
areas through USMCA."
In addition to increases in tariff-rate quota access for
dairy products to the Canadian market, Canada will remove a controversial milk
pricing scheme that disadvantaged American businesses, impose new disciplines
on its dairy pricing programs and Mexico will update the way it treats imports
of common-name food products like parmesan and swiss cheeses that could face
trade roadblocks.
"When examining USMCA's benefit to the economy, we
believe it is important to keep the full picture in mind of what's at stake
here," explained Jim Mulhern the president and CEO of the National Milk
Producers Federation. "USDA recently reported that our country lost an
average of seven dairy farms a day in 2018 due to the poor economic conditions
in rural America. That's a startling number, and reversing this alarming trend
is what we should be discussing. USMCA helps put us on a path to doing that by
safeguarding our largest export market and instituting valuable new
improvements to dairy trade in North America."
The benefits of USMCA expand far beyond just dairy; the Food
& Agriculture Dialogue on Trade also summarized the value of the agreement
and the proper lens through which to examine the ITC report's results. That
document lays out why American Agriculture needs passage of USMCA noting for
instance that: "uncertainty about NAFTA's future threatens the North
American market integration that has created and supports jobs for many U.S.
food and agriculture producers."