Addressing non-tariff barriers have been central to agricultural trade negotiations and we sat down with Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Luke Lindberg to learn more.
Under Secretary Lindberg said, “To me it’s actually one of the best stories of the past year. We have had a remarkable shift in the way in which our team at the U.S. Trade Representatives Office has negotiated deals. Because in the past what happens is countries will take the opportunity to erect what we all call non-tariff barriers. These ideas that for some reason our food isn’t safe or we have too much of something left on the food or there’s some issue with the way it’s produced and then maybe somebody ships an entire load of corn or soybeans or cotton somewhere and it gets rejected at a port. What happened in many of these new trade agreements has been that the U.S. Trade Representatives team and our Chief Ag Negotiator Julie Callahan has been the lead on this is they have gotten countries to recognize that the U.S. food system is safe, hard stop.”
“It is a very material shift in the way in which we’re negotiating these agreements. Malaysia would be an example of that. If it’s safe to eat in the United States, it’s safe to eat in Malaysia. And that allows us to really take down a lot of these non-tariff barriers and continue to refer back to that clause in these agreements time and again when new situations arise where we can say no, the U.S. food system is in fact safe and you agreed to that and so it’s safe to eat here, it’s safe to eat there as well. Changes the game for our farmers and ranchers, gives us a lot of leverage going forward,” said Lindberg.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.