Articles Tagged with ''Katherine Tai''

The U.S. was one of nine countries critical of the European Union last year when it unveiled a plan to tax imports based on their carbon footprint, but that was under the Trump administration. Now the Biden administration is signaling a stronger kinship to the EU’s push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on an international scale.

Robert Bonnie has been tapped to be the next USDA undersecretary for farm production and conservation programs, and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai appoints Elizabeth Baltzan as a senior adviser.

Some of the most vocal criticisms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was that it did not include provisions to address climate change. It’s a view that U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Thursday that she shares and went on to provide rationale for making environmental protection a much bigger factor in future of trade policy.

The U.S. ag sector really wants to know what’s coming next for the tenuous trade situation with China, but farmers and ranchers may have to settle for the status quo in the near future as the Biden administration takes its first steps toward dealing with the communist country.

The U.S. on Monday suspended a formal trade tie with Burma two months after a military coup and the arrest of the country’s elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others in her National League for Democracy party. The U.S. action comes after years of increasing agricultural trade with Burma amid warming relations between the two countries, but that progress is now threatened.

USDA is re-starting the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and providing $6 billion in new forms of pandemic aid, tapping additional authority provided by Congress in December.

USDA’s top climate adviser, Robert Bonnie, says agriculture and forestry are going to figure in any new climate commitments that the United States makes to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Laura Cattani was appointed to the Kern County Water Agency board and the California Fresh Fruit Association has elected a new chairman and officers on its board of directors for 2021.