OMAHA
(DTN) -- Fearful about the prospect of seeing NAFTA derailed, more than 30
ag-related business groups have come together to create Americans for Farmers
& Families, a coalition focused on stressing the importance of the
free-trade agreement to President Donald Trump, his administration and
Congress.
The
groups represent general farm organizations and a broad array of commodity
groups and lobby organizations up and down the food supply chain, from bakers
to distillers to the rail industry.
Americans
for Farmers & Families highlights that the North American Free Trade
Agreement is an economic engine in rural America -- "the very same
communities that powered President Trump to victory in 2016."
The new
coalition builds on similar groups that also have cropped up to defend NAFTA,
such as Farmers for Free Trade, which made a major push to highlight the
importance of NAFTA last week at the American Farm Bureau Federation annual
meeting.
A round
of NAFTA talks begin next week in Montreal, which will be the sixth round of
official discussions between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Americans
for Farmers & Families calls for preserving but modernizing NAFTA and
cautions against any attempts by the Trump administration to withdraw from the
24-year-old trade pact. Since NAFTA began, the coalition points out, U.S. food
and agricultural exports have more than quadrupled and account for 25% of
American exports. Essentially, one in every 10 acres of American crops is
exported to Canada or Mexico.
"Farm
Belt voters supported President Trump by a three-to-one margin in the last
election, and they are counting on President Trump to improve NAFTA in the
modernization negotiations," said John Bode, president and CEO of the Corn
Refiners Association and a member of the Americans for Farmers & Families
leadership team. "It's not an exaggeration to say many farmers are still
farming today because of NAFTA. We know that President Trump has a lot of
experience negotiating good deals. We support him in updating and improving
NAFTA."
Americans
for Farmers & Families intends to launch "a robust educational
campaign to highlight the positive impact NAFTA achieves for hard-working
Americans" and focus on updating the trade deal.
"We
look forward to being active participants in this discussion as we ensure the
growers, producers, processors, transporters retailers and consumers we
represent have their voices heard," added Chris Novak, CEO of the National
Corn Growers Association and another member of the Americans for Farmers &
Families leadership committee. "This issue is simply too important for us
to sit on the sidelines."
Zippy
Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, and Neil Dierks, CEO
of the National Pork Council, were also quoted in the news release announcing
the formation of Americans for Farmers & Families. "Canada and Mexico
represent the second and third largest markets for U.S. agriculture,"
Dierks said. "A modernized NAFTA is critical to the prosperity of rural
America."
Last week, the American Farm Bureau highlighted some of the
largest commodity exports to NAFTA countries and the percentage of those
exports for each state in the continental 48 states. (https://goo.gl/…)
The
formation of the new group comes just after the global firm Oxford Economics
released a study stating that scrapping NAFTA would create a short-term dip in
the U.S. economy by lowering gross domestic product in 2019, increase inflation
on consumers and cost the U.S. as many as 300,000 jobs.
Farmers
and lawmakers have been increasingly concerned President Trump will invoke a
NAFTA clause seeking to withdraw from the trade deal within six months even
though Congress would need to officially take action to withdraw from the trade
deal to make it an official action by the U.S. Still, some analysts see a
withdrawal announcement as a way to gain some leverage to get a deal done
quickly.
Politics
are also quickly encroaching on the NAFTA talks. The Mexican presidential
election will be held in July, followed by U.S. congressional mid-term
elections next fall. Trump told the Wall Street Journal last week he would be
flexible about any withdraw plans because of the Mexican election.
"I
understand that a lot of things are hard to negotiate prior to an
election," the president told the Wall Street Journal.