Articles by Bill Tomson

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2017 – Maintaining the duty-free status on U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico and Canada is one of the key objectives for U.S. negotiators as they prepare to begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to a list of goals published today by the U.S. Trade Representative.

WASHINGTON, July 13, 2017 – Members of the Senate Agriculture Committee are being urged to maintain funding for two key USDA export assistance programs that the Trump administration has targeted for elimination as well as other programs that help U.S. farmers sell everything from apples to popcorn overseas.

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2017 – USDA chief Sonny Perdue is in China primarily to celebrate the resumption of beef trade, but he’s also using the occasion to press officials there on the country’s need to reform its biotech approval process and to lift its bans on U.S. rice and poultry.

BRAZIL, June 28, 2017 - It was an unprecedented move in 2013 when the U.S. and Brazil announced simultaneously that they were lifting their bans on each other’s beef.

WASHINGTON, June 24, 2017 - The topics were as varied as the crops grown in the South, but research and labor stood out as common threads at the three-hour listening session held today by the House Agriculture Committee at the University of Florida.