Livestock Interests Back Compromise Trade Bill

June 28, 2001

National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) President Barb Determan believes bipartisan trade promotion authority (TPA) legislation introduced in the Senate is "an important step in breaking the impasse over trade that is strangling the economic life out of American farmers and ranchers." The legislation, introduced by Sens. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Frank Murkowski (R-AK), seeks a compromise on the question of how to ensure that labor and environmental standards can be enforced in future trade agreements.

The legislation will "aid expansion into foreign markets for America's cattle ranchers and boost the depressed U.S. agriculture economy," said National Cattlemen's Beef Association's Chief Economist, Chuck Lambert.

TPA authority, which has not been renewed since 1994, allows the president to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can either approve or reject, but not amend. The Graham-Murkowski legislation would require countries to maintain protections for labor and the environment but leave it to U.S. negotiators to decide how to enforce those provisions.

"The only way our farmers and ranchers will succeed is through free trade and that can't happen in a meaningful way without TPA," Determan said. "The Graham-Murkowski legislation applies a common sense approach to a very difficult issue and should be embraced as a reasonable compromise by everyone who supports free trade as a reasonable compromise. Pork producers applaud this bill as an encouraging sign of progress."

"Cattlemen support maintaining a wholesome environment -- after all we are talking about the environment where we and our families live." Lambert said, "It is possible to do what is right for the economy, labor and the environment. The US beef market is already the most open in the world. The only way to level the playing field is to negotiate increased market access and tariff reduction in other major beef markets."

Lambert continued, "TPA provides a great opportunity to expand agricultural trade. U.S. beef exports have increased more than five-fold since the 1980s when the Japan beef-citrus agreement was negotiated. Last year U.S. beef exports totaled a record $3.6 billion to markets that have primarily been opened through negotiations subject to Trade Promotion Authority. U.S. negotiators must be authorized to negotiate the best deal possible to have any hope of reducing tariffs on U.S. beef exported to Japan (currently 38.5%) and Korea (currently 40%), or of gaining access to the EU beef market."0