**Christmas tree growers expect to overcome the challenges of COVID-19 and a Pacific Northwest heatwave to provide enough trees for 2021 demand.

After a tree-by-tree evaluation, growers expect to supply the same overall number of real Christmas trees to the marketplace this season as they’d planned before the crises hit.

With about eight weeks until Christmas tree shopping season, experts are confident there will be a real Christmas tree for everyone who wants one this year.

**U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met virtually last week with U.K. Secretary of State for International Trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan, emphasizing her commitment to deepening bilateral trade and investment ties between the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

The USTR office says Tai discussed USTR’s ongoing review of the U.S. – U.K. free trade agreement negotiations to evaluate how a potential agreement could support the President’s broader Build Back Better agenda.

**California’s table olive acreage continues to decline.

Even though olive production increased this year over 2020, California’s 12,800 total acres of olives in 2021 amounted to less than one-third of the state’s olive acreage in 2011.

The decline continues as one of California’s top olive processers, Bell-Carter Foods, is embroiled in a bitter legal fight with a Spanish company that was once a major business partner.

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