Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 7/22/16


Debate about the topic of free trade in the U.S. presidential race could send some discouraging signals to U.S. trade partners.
So warned Thad Lively, the U.S. Meat Export Federation’s senior vice president for trade access, at the Cattle Industry Summer Business Meeting in Denver during a panel discussion on several key trade issues affecting U.S. beef export opportunities.

Both candidates, Hillary Clinton (D) and Donald Trump (R), oppose, for example, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In his speech accepting the Republican nomination, Trump, for example, said, “The TPP will not only destroy our manufacturing, but it will make America subject to the rulings of foreign governments. I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence. Instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries.”

Meat interests have hailed TPP as a major boon for the industry, largely by way of significant reductions in trade tariffs on their exports. At the cattle industry meeting, Lively used the example of Japan, which, as part of TPP, would lower its tax on U.S. beef to 9 percent of the value of the product, from 38.5 percent, over 15 years. “That’s going to make a huge difference,” he said, encouraging ratification of the TPP.

“TPP is something that we drove to its conclusion at the negotiating stage,” Lively said. “If the other 11 countries realize that this whole thing is going to fall apart, with all the political capital they have invested, etc., because the United States has an election, that sends the wrong message I think out to the world. So, bottom line, we’ll be left behind.”

Lively also touched on the slow rate of progress in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between the U.S. and the European Union, which became even more difficult when voters in the United Kingdom recently opted to leave the EU.

“The effect of 'Brexit’ is that now a lot of the people in the European Commission who have to negotiate these deals, their attention is now going to be turned to how do we unwind this agreement with the U.K., so the odds of this happening already were very low and 'Brexit,’ if anything, pushed them a little lower.”

Lively was joined on the panel by Kent Bacus, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association director of international trade, and Bill Westman, senior vice president of international affairs for the North American Meat Institute.

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