Recently Southeast AgNet was able to catch up with USDA Trade and Foreign Agriculture Affairs Undersecretary Luke Lindbergh to discuss upcoming trade missions with Australia, Ghana, and Vietnam. Lindbergh described why these countries were selected.
“Yeah, so Australia, we have new access for U.S. beef, so it’s exciting there. It’s been a great trading partner in the past. We also compete with them in many markets, and so there’s some good opportunities we feel in Australia, and I’ll probably make a stopover in New Zealand as part of that visit as well. Ghana being a critical market right in Africa where we can get access for our products a little easier, a little quicker than going around the horn and on the other side of Africa, but Ghana being a relatively stable country, a strong economy in the region, and one that really is a great launching place for commodities into the broader rest of all of the African nations,” said Secretary Lindberg.
“So excited about those two opportunities. I talked a little bit about Vietnam earlier. We had just a really tremendous set of trade policy updates with our new agreement with Vietnam that’s moving real products, so we’re getting huge wins there already, and we just need to make sure we lock in those wins and really turn the tide of what the U.S.-Vietnam agricultural trade relationship is going to look like today and then down the road into the future for tomorrow,” added Secretary Lindberg.
Audio Reporting by Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.