Former Senators, Pork Trade Group Talk IPEF Ag Possibilities
Former Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who also is a former ambassador to China, said that while the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is weak compared with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, "but it’s a beginning and we have to work with it." Baucus said he continues to believe the U.S. should have joined the TPP, which has been rebranded as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, but said that when he flew back from China to lobby on its behalf, "It was pretty clear this is toxic -- this was going nowhere."
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While Baucus still would like the U.S. to reenter the trade deal, he said, "[President Joe] Biden is pretty much under the influence of organized labor, that’s why he doesn’t want any part of TPP." He said that while critics say IPEF is "kind of a nothing-burger," he hopes that down the road, it will lead to tariff reductions and increased market access for U.S. agricultural exporters.
Baucus was speaking on a June 1 webinar hosted by Farmers for Free Trade. He said that while the U.S. needs to put its national security ahead of some commercial interests in China, "We also have to deal with China. China’s not going away." He said that countries in the region such as Indonesia wanted the TPP to be a counterweight to China's economic influence.
Maria Zieba, assistant vice president of international affairs for the National Pork Producers Council, said that while her group would love to see an approach that would lower tariffs in Asia, such as rejoining the TPP, she noted that trade negotiators in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have gotten tariffs dropped in the Phillippines and a higher quota, have gotten Vietnam to drop its tariff on pork, and solved non-tariff barriers that had kept American pork out of India.
In response to a question from Export Compliance Daily, Zieba said that including sanitary and phytosanitary issues in IPEF could be more effective than addressing issues through trade and investment framework agreements with various countries participating in IPEF.
"For a lot of these countries, the SPS barriers that we face are numerous, and seem to evolve," she said. She said she believes IPEF could apply "a bit more pressure" than the U.S. can achieve through TIFAs, and that it's possible there could be coalitions of IPEF countries, where some of the group are also exporters facing the same SPS issue with one of the participating countries, and so those countries and the U.S. could join forces in their requests.
Former Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., also participated in the webinar, and bemoaned the rise of more isolationists in the Republican Party, which he sees as contributing to the waning support in Congress for free trade. "I probably picked a pretty good time to get out of the race," he said.