WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2015 – USDA today released data showing how U.S. agriculture could benefit from the successful conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim nations.
From apples through beer, beef, corn and soybeans, all the way to wine and wheat, USDA lists 22 different commodities or commodity groups and then provides a brief description of what farmers, ranchers and food processors stand to gain from the tariff reductions the treaty is aimed at.
Here what USDA has to say about Soybeans and Soybean Products: “Under the agreement, tariffs across the TPP region will be cut, offering new market access opportunities to U.S. producers and exporters of soybeans and soybean products. In 2014 the United States exported $5.5 billion of this product to the TPP region.”
USDA also provides a separate list that highlights agricultural export data for every state in the union and how each state would be helped by the TPP. Click on California, for example, and you’ll see that the state is the biggest agricultural exporter, shipping products worth $19.5 billion in 2013, including vegetables that now face tariffs as high as 90 percent in some TPP countries.
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The data was released in conjunction with series of executive actions announced today designed to help rural America boost its manufacturing and find new markets for its products abroad.
It is also part of a campaign by the Obama administration to secure what’s known as trade promotion authority for the president. TPA would allow the chief executive to negotiate a treaty that Congress could only accept or reject, but not modify. Many observers say the president needs TPA to successfully conclude TPP and another trade agreement with the European Union called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or T-TIP.
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