December 19, 2018

US agriculture, food groups demand open access to EU market

An ad hoc coalition of more than 50 US food and agriculture organisations is insisting that any trade deal between the US and the EU must include agriculture and that such a deal should address the EU's restrictive tariff and non-tariff barriers on US farm products.

In a letter sent on December 18 to the Office of the US Trade Representative, the organisations, led by the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), urged the Trump administration "to continue stressing to [the EU] that only a truly comprehensive agreement will be acceptable to the Administration and, ultimately, to the US Congress."

The EU has expressed reluctance to include agriculture - as it did during earlier negotiations on the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - knowing it would require lifting import barriers that protect EU farmers and removing regulatory measures that are scientifically unjustified or overly restrictive, NPPC said.

As a result of the EU's barriers, the US had a trade deficit in food and agricultural goods of nearly US$11 billion last year. That deficit was $US1.8 billion in 2000.

"This is not because European consumers do not want American products," US food and agriculture groups pointed out. "It is because EU tariffs and non-science-based regulations deny consumers a choice."

On pork, for example, the EU's high tariffs and "unscientific" sanitary-phytosanitary measures limited US pork exports to the second largest pork-consuming market in the world to less than 4,000 tonnes in 2017, NPPC claimed.

The US sends more pork to countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Singapore than it does to the EU.

According to Iowa State University economist Dermot Hayes, the elimination of the EU's tariff and non-tariff barriers on US pork would result in billions of dollars in new exports to Europe and would create nearly 18,000 new US jobs.

"The EU has played the United States like a drum in the past," said NPPC president Jim Heimerl. "This must stop. We expect the Trump administration to require the EU to negotiate on agriculture and to eliminate all tariff and non-tariff barriers to US pork and other agricultural products."

"If the EU wishes to conclude a trade agreement that addresses inequities in trade between us and that ultimately will be approved by Congress, such barriers and measures that restrict US agriculture's access … must be included as part of negotiations and successfully addressed in a final agreement," the coalition concluded.

- NPPC