Ag Trade Promotion Program Could Boost U.S. Red Meat Exports

USDA recently provided further information on the actions it will take to assist farmers in response to trade retaliation imposed by foreign nations. More details are included in this USDA news release.

As noted in the USDA release, $200 million will be made available to help U.S. agricultural exporters identify and access new markets through the Agricultural Trade Promotion Program (ATP) administered by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. In the attached audio report, Greg Hanes, U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) vice president for international marketing, explains how a portion of this funding may be utilized to bolster U.S. red meat exports.

While Mexico (pork), China (pork and beef) and Canada (cooked/prepared beef) are the three trading partners that have imposed retaliatory duties on U.S. red meat, Hanes says the ATP appears to offer flexibility in determining where promotional funding will be used, which will be helpful in maximizing the positive impact on U.S. exports.

More details on the ATP were published in the Aug. 30 Federal Register.

Transcript

Joe Schuele: In response to retaliation imposed by foreign nations, USDA will make $200 million available to boost U.S. exports for the agricultural trade promotion program. U.S. Meat Export Federation Vice President for International Marketing Greg Hanes has more details in this USMEF report:

Greg Hanes: So the one program that's probably most interesting to us is the Agricultural Trade Promotion Program, and that's going to allow for $200 million towards the direct promotion of agricultural products in the international markets. An emphasis will be placed on products that are impacted by the tariffs that some of our larger markets have imposed on us. For USMEF this is going to be very, very helpful because Mexico and China, especially on the pork side, are very key markets for us. Beef we were just starting to get in there as well. We see this as critical going forward especially with the impact that it's been having on pork prices. These new funds will allow us to go in and be very aggressive and try to reboost and recapture these markets being impacted by this additional duty.

Joe Schuele:In addition to the countries that have imposed new duties on U.S. pork and beef, Hanes expects the program to be flexible enough to be used in other key international markets.

Greg Hanes: That's one of the exciting things about this program — there appears to be a lot of flexibility to allow us really to determine where we can have the biggest impact for our industry, so we can use the program in a wide variety of markets, not just those that put direct duties on us. For example, Japan would be another case of a big market that we are impacted because our competitors have been signing new trade deals there. The EU has signed a new deal with Japan; our other competitors — Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand — are in the CPTPP so they're going to have advantageous rates going in for both beef and pork. We can also be very aggressive in some of these emerging markets in southeast Asia, Central/South America, the markets where we can move the most product.

Joe Schuele: For more information, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.

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The U.S. Meat Export Federation (www.USMEF.org) is the trade association responsible for developing international markets for the U.S. red meat industry. It is funded by USDA; the beef, pork, lamb, corn and soybean checkoff programs, as well as its members representing nine industry sectors: beef/veal producing & feeding, pork producing & feeding, lamb producing & feeding, packing & processing, purveying & trading, oilseeds producing, feedgrains producing, farm organizations and supply & service organizations.