Several regulations in the review stage under the Obama administration on agriculture and other areas now have a more-uncertain time line after Trump officials marked them as withdrawn, sending them back to their respective departments, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) website as of January 27.To advance, the withdrawn rules would need to be submitted again to OMB. The moves are part of the Trump administration's broader regulatory freeze signed just hours after the president's January 20 inauguration. Since then, the OMB has effectively cleared the table of regulations under review. The decree put a halt on any new regulations until March 21.In the last few weeks of President Barack Obama's term, the White House finalized a slew of long-awaited regulations, including rules creating a checkoff program for the organic industry and others overhauling poultry farming contracts. Because of Trump's regulatory freeze, the implementation of some of those rules could be delayed or abandoned altogether. The rules withdrawn by the administration had yet to be reviewed, finalized and sent out for implementation by OMB.The freeze, in part, halts plans for USDA to seek public comment on implementing legislation creating a nationwide labeling system for foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Congress passed a GMO labeling law in mid-2016 and asked USDA to finalize the rules by 2018.The order could prevent the department from taking comments on an advance notice of proposed rulemaking and could also push back the time line for the department to complete a study on whether electronic labels such as QR codes are an effective way to convey GMO information. That study was expected to be completed by mid-2017.Trump's order also put a halt to a proposed rule that would establish standards for organic fish farms. That rule had been under review at OMB since August 2015.***US-Mexico Sugar Trade Suspension Agreement
Efforts to revise the 2014 U.S.-Mexico sugar trade suspension agreement have been lengthy and unresolved issues remain. The U.S. has tried to get Mexico to agree to a proposed solution but to date Mexico has not accepted, despite the U.S. offering Mexico a proposal of which Mexico has not yet responded.Mexico is the top supplier to the U.S. sugar industry and negotiators from both countries are in talks to the suspension agreement that prescribes the balance of raw and refined sugar that heads to the U.S. to ensure refiners have what they need. Among the terms that the some in the U.S. sugar industry have proposed to Mexico are clauses that specify what type of refiner can receive Mexican imports under the deal.The U.S. Department of Commerce in preliminary findings from a review of the 2014 U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty suspension agreements involving exports of sugar from Mexico to the U.S. released Nov. 29, 2016, indicated some transactions may be out of compliance with the agreement, among other issues.But Commerce said it had not yet found a sufficient basis to make a reliable judgment as to whether the Government of Mexico and the Mexican respondent mills have adhered to the terms of the agreements and whether they continue to meet the requirements. The Commerce has delayed several times its final review of the matter, with the latest date said to be April.Sugar trade between the two countries, absent any updated trade suspension agreement, would be impacted should the NAFTA accord be revised or if the U.S. officially withdraws from the pact. If so, Mexico would not be able to send much sugar to the U.S. as the U.S. sugar import quota was established during a time when Mexico did not sell much sugar to the U.S.
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