Articles by Bill Tomson

Mexican sugar farmers, U.S. refiners and the U.S. food sector have a lot riding on the current efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

China is the largest foreign buyer of U.S. agricultural commodities, and the Trump administration’s increasingly antagonistic trade tactics have farmers and ranchers here bracing for retaliation.

It may not be fair to put so much pressure and responsibility on Gregg Doud, but much of the U.S. ag sector is counting on the farm economist from Kansas to be their chief trade negotiator and help prevent the dissolution of vitally important trade pacts and open up lucrative new markets across the globe.

Whether it’s the FDA tightening control over produce safety as it implements the Food Safety Modernization Act or the Interior Department’s policies on cattle grazing, farmers and ranchers can get caught up in complex regulations written by agencies that often don’t understand agriculture the way USDA does.

U.S. complaints that Europe wasn’t living up to a promise to import American beef were ignored for years, but that’s changed in the months since the Trump administration began considering retaliatory duties on European imports. Now the two sides are talking and it looks like a deal could be in the works.

When it comes to forging trade alliances around the globe, the European Union is moving at seemingly breakneck speed. The 28-country bloc is securing new and expanded markets in Asia, South America and North America at a time when the U.S. seems to be in neutral or even reverse.