WASHINGTON, May 5, 2016 - With all of his Republican challengers out of
the race, Donald Trump is now pivoting to the general election. But when it
comes to trade his message isn’t changing one iota. In an extended interview
yesterday with CNN, Trump pounded on the issue as he predicted he would carry
“blue” states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and even New York.
Trump has shifted to talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership
specifically to repeatedly slamming the North American Free Trade Agreement. He
said he would win all of the states “horribly affected by NAFTA,” which he
called a “Clinton deal,” a reference to Hillary Clinton’s husband.
Bill Reinsch, president of the Foreign Trade Council, tells Agri-Pulse that
he expects Trump to “flog the (trade) issue to death. That will in turn force
Clinton to criticize President Obama’s trade policy as well, ensuring that
trade “remains a front page issue through the election,” and making it harder
for Congress to take up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Reinsch says.
Farmers and agribusiness companies who want to see the TPP approved
must keep “making clear the benefit it provides to them,” Reinsch says.
Many in business hope Trump will moderate his position, if he’s
elected, but Trump adviser Roger Stone told
The New York Times that Trump won’t do that. “He has said he would
scrap trade deals; his voters will demand he scrap trade deals. He knows that,”
Stone says.
House chairman demands answers on glyphosate report. A House
committee chairman is demanding that EPA officials explain why they posted -
and then removed - a study that concluded that the herbicide glyphosate is
unlikely to cause cancer.
In a letter to
the agency, Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, notes
that the report is clearly labeled as “final” and contains the signatures of
thirteen members of EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee. “EPA’s removal of
this report and the subsequent backtracking on its finality raises questions
about the agency’s motivation in providing a fair assessment of glyphosate,”
Smith writes.
Smith is ordering EPA to turn over all internal documents and
communications about the report going back to January 2015.
EPA: Atrazine study wasn’t final. EPA repeated the same chain of
events Tuesday with a draft ecological assessment of the herbicide atrazine.
The agency, which gave no explanation for removing the report on Tuesday, tellsAgri-Pulse that
the atrazine document hadn’t been finalized.
EPA says it expects to release the draft assessment for public comment
in the next few months. The agency says it will study the comments, revise the
risk assessment, and then propose risk mitigation strategies where appropriate.
Atrazine is currently undergoing registration review by the agency.
The primary registrant of atrazine, Syngenta, says in a statement to Agri-Pulsethat
EPA’s draft report is "scientifically incorrect." The company says
EPA scientists “discounted several high-quality studies” and instead used
studies that EPA‘s own 2012 Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) deemed to be
flawed.
The report proposes a new threshold, or “level of concern” (LOC), at
which atrazine would be hazardous to aquatic species. Syngenta says the LOC
isn’t justified by the science.
Study puts value on weed control. Controlling weeds in U.S. corn
and soybean fields saves an astounding $43 billion a year, according to a team
of experts with the Weed Science Society of America.
The experts calculated that failing to control weeds would reduce
corn yields by 52 percent if farmers used best management practices
but no herbicidal weed control. Soybean yields would be hit
by 49.5 percent. Those estimates were then applied to the value of corn and
soybeans from 2007 to 2013, a period when the price of corn averaged $4.94,
well above current levels. The results: Weed control would have saved $27
billion during that period on corn and $16 billion for soybeans.
Ethanol edges near 10 percent of gasoline supply. The Energy Information
Administration says the amount of ethanol in the nation’s gasoline
supply reached 9.9 percent last year, up from 9.8 percent in 2014. Put another
way, blends of 10 percent ethanol (E10) now account for 95 percent of all
gasoline consumed in U.S. motor vehicles.
EIA says the data emphasize that the only way to increase ethanol usage
is to increase the sales of higher ethanol blends. The agency estimates that
there are about 16.3 million vehicles nationwide, 7 percent of the U.S. fleet,
which can run on blends of up to 85 percent ethanol.
He said it. “I will put states in play that no other Republican
will talk about or go to.” - Donald Trump, claiming that he can carry states
such as Michigan and Pennsylvania that have been hurt by trade.
