U.S.-Korea Trade Negotiations and NAFTA Talks Intensify
**The U.S.-Korea free trade agreement has been a target of criticism from the White House, but the fact the two countries are still talking about how to improve the pact has the U.S. ag community hoping it survives.
According to Agri-Pulse, both countries are talking about possible changes to KORUS because the Trump administration is unhappy about our nation’s roughly $28 billion deficit in traded goods.
**FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says his agency is “taking a step back” to “reset” aspects of the Food Safety Modernization Act to make sure the law is sustainable and feasible for states to implement.
Gottlieb says they’d like to push back the start of inspections to assess compliance with the non-water requirements of FSMA’s Produce Safety Rule by a year, to 2019.
According to Agri-Pulse, the FDA also proposed extending the compliance dates for ag water requirements by two to four years.
**A lot of work to support ag trade got done during the second round of negotiations to rewrite NAFTA in Mexico City, but those talks are expected to be tame compared to what’s to come in Ottawa and beyond.
Industry and government officials tell Agri-Pulse that much of the ag work in Mexico focused on modernizing the sanitary and phytosanitary rules that govern trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but the governments are preparing to go head to head over issues like Canadian dairy pricing that hurts U.S. farmers