Finding a Level Playing Field
By Rep. Kristi Noem
Around 95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside our borders. If we can’t reach foreign consumers on a level playing field, our growth is limited.
For years, China has exploited its massive purchasing power, often at the expense of American farmers, ranchers and manufacturers. When the Trump administration set out to rebalance this trading relationship, China retaliated. I recently invited Scott VanderWal, a Volga-area farmer and president of the South Dakota Farm Bureau, to testify at a congressional hearing on trade. He explained, “The problem is [China] knows just where to punch us back in a dispute: by targeting our agriculture products. Through no fault of our own, and unintentionally, [the agriculture] industry ends up being used for leverage.”
The undue burden agriculture is bearing is something I’ve worked to impress upon the administration. After numerous conversations with President Trump and administration officials, I was pleased to see the USDA announce a $12 billion aid package this summer that gives South Dakota producers an added safety net.
The proposal takes a three-pronged approach: Give producers a boost, expand a USDA food-buying program to increase demand, and develop new global market opportunities. I’m hopeful this package will offer some breathing room for farmers and ranchers.
But talk to almost any producer, and they’ll tell you they want trade, not aid.
While China dominates the global market for commodities, Canada and Mexico are some of America’s most important trading partners. For more than two decades, NAFTA has set the rules of trade on the North American continent, but when President Trump took office, he launched a renegotiation process to modernize the deal.
This August, the U.S. renegotiation team reached a preliminary agreement with Mexico, which imports around 39 percent of American ag products. According to the White House, the pact includes a continuation of zero tariffs on agricultural products, new standards for ag biotechnology, improved transparency, and more. It’s a promising development that I’m hopeful will help drive Canada to the table and once again offer producers greater certainty in trade.
Of course, agriculture isn’t the only industry that’s confronted trade challenges in recent months. This January, in response to a claim that Canada was unfairly dumping paper into U.S. markets, the Commerce Department applied heavy tariffs while the agency investigated the claims. South Dakota’s local newspapers rely on this imported paper because U.S. paper mills are already running at full capacity and can’t provide all the paper needed to keep prices low. The tariffs increased newsprint costs by nearly 30 percent.
All but one U.S.-based paper mill opposed the tariffs, and small-town South Dakota newspapers told me the costs were too much to bear, so I pushed back. I introduced the PRINT Act, which would have temporarily suspended the tariffs in order to give the Commerce Department time to investigate the impact. I also joined Sens. Thune and Rounds in a letter to David Johanson, Chairman of the International Trade Commission (ITC), urging him to reject the tariffs. In late August, the ITC agreed to our request and nullified the tariffs, delivering an important victory for hometown newspapers, for the small-town businesses who advertise in those papers, and for consumers in South Dakota.
As we look at ongoing trade negotiations, it’s important that we continue to strive for a level playing field. Americans produce some of the world’s best products, and those goods ought to be sold in a marketplace that is fair, open, and competitive.