The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been implementing “Rapid-Response Trade Missions” as part of their two-pronged strategy to boost U.S. agricultural exports and the agricultural economy for producers. We sat down with Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Luke Lindberg to learn how these missions are helping to support agricultural trade.
Under Secretary Lindberg said, “A lot of these countries, as we’ve been negotiating with so many around the don’t want to get lost in the shuffle of the president signing new agreements, opening up market access.”
“Each one of them wants to work with the United States of America. And the president has done such a great job of working with so many markets that I think sometimes folks get concerned that they may just be one of many that we’re considering. So these rapid response missions, in terms of how well they’re received by our market partners in these countries, are so, so important and so well received because it shows that we’re following through and doing what we say we’re going to do, and we’re prioritizing them,” said Lindberg.
“They want to do deals with Americans. In fact, most of these consumers in these markets want to eat food produced in America. They believe it’s safe. They believe it’s high quality. They believe it’s nutritious. And it is. Oftentimes, it’s the government bureaucrats in the past that have gotten in the way. And so when we show up in the wake of a trade agreement and we bring along a beef rancher or something that has a product to sell or wants to do a deal in that market and get something on the grocery store shelves, there’s a tremendous amount of interest in these markets to be the first ones,” said Lindberg.
Lindberg also shared an example of the desire of these importers wanting to do business with ag producers in the U.S., saying, “And the story I’ll share there is we were in Malaysia not long ago, and we had a very large restaurant group owner who hosted us. And she recently made an investment in a U.S. processing plant to make sure that she was first in line to get beef into Malaysia for her restaurants because she wanted to be the one to showcase that in the wake of this agreement. That’s the kind of thing we love to see, and that’s the kind of wins that we’re putting up on the board.”
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.