The Chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee issued perhaps his most direct public warning yet to the Trump Administration on a possible North American Free Trade Agreement “pullout.”
Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Pat Roberts spoke to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce audience in Washington, D.C. on the strategy President Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are pursuing on NAFTA—threatening Mexico and Canada with a ‘pullout.’
Roberts warned that the U.S. is coming to a “crossroads” on NAFTA, with negotiations so far, yielding little progress. He urged producers and manufacturers to push back against the pervasive view that NAFTA has not benefited the economy.
Chairman Roberts predicted that the fate of the nation’s economy will rest on open trade.
Roberts points out that U.S. agriculture exports to Canada have soared since 1993, by 265 percent, and to Mexico by 289 percent.
He says the U.S. must remain a “reliable supplier” with its neighbors in North America and around the world, otherwise, he suggests, its economy, including its farmers, will suffer.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.