On May 11, 2017 NAEGA and the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative regarding the Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Deficits for the President in response to Executive Order 13786. In the comments NAEGA and NGFA provides a specific analysis of U.S. grain, oilseed and feed trade and highlights the continued and significant positive contribution that the U.S. grain and oilseed industry has on the U.S. balance of trade.  Ultimately, we seek collaboration with the U.S. Administration focused on:

• Maintaining and expanding market access, tariff concessions and other provisions that have enabled economic integration.
• Improving regulatory coherence and cooperation by implementing enhanced science-based sanitary and phytosanitary rules, such as a rapid-response mechanism that commits trading partners to swiftly notify and resolve such issues, thereby averting costly demurrage and trade inefficiencies associated with U.S. agricultural exports being held at customs in importing countries.
• Strengthening efforts to address technical barriers to trade to prevent non-tariff barriers that lack scientific merit.
• Increasing transparency and cooperation on activities related to modern agricultural production technologies, including seed-breeding innovations.
• Aligning standards, including product and ingredient registration, fortification and certification requirements.
• Enabling innovation of information technologies to improve logistics and regulatory implementation.

A copy of the comments can be found here.