Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “USTR”
If the Administration is exercising their rights to support “innovation, nutrition security, sustainability, and the mutual success of our farmers and producers”, they must also advance social justice, food sovereignty and environmental protections for all partners instead of a race to the bottom for the producers and workers providing our food.
We are unified in our opposition to the U.S. government petition against Canada, and call on the Biden-Harris administration to rescind this action and to advance strong worker rights protection and dairy policy reform policy in the U.S.
NAFTA should be replaced with a different agreement with the goal of increasing living standards in all three countries. Any provisions related to agriculture must start from a goal of rebuilding farm and food systems to support fair and sustainable rural economies and food supplies.
This week has been a jam packed week here in DC. In addition to the Appropriations process and a few conferences (more on those later), the fifth round of negotiations for the EU-US trade deal (TAFTA, the TransAtlantic Free Trade Agreement, or TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) happened on the George Mason University School of Law campus.
This week has been a busy week in DC. The TAFTA negotiators were in town and NFFC, along with other members of the Citizens Trade Campaign, greeted them on gray Monday morning.
NFFC joined Friends of the Earth in a protest outside of the Charlie Palmer’s Steak House where USTR Mike Froman had lunch with “green groups” to discuss the Trans Pacific Partnership.
With Copenhagen around the corner and failure of this week’s WTO negotiations, the Obama administration’s international agenda and leadership style are coming under scrutiny. The potential confirmation of controversial former pesticide lobbyist Islam Siddiqui as the U.S. trade representative for agriculture threatens to further undermine this administration’s credibility in international forums by privileging U.S. corporate interests over the global public interest and common good.
NFFC and Pesticide Action Network North America expressed disappointment today with Islam Siddiqui’s testimony and answers during the Senate Finance Committee hearing on his nomination to become the next USTR Chief Agriculture Negotiator.
In an unprecedented effort to block a USTR agriculture nominee, over 80 groups sent a letter today to Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Charles Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee urging the rejection of Islam Siddiqui as Chief Agriculture Negotiator at the office of the United States Trade Representative.
Sustainable agriculture advocates from around the country today expressed deep disappointment with the Obama Administration’s defense of nominating Islam Siddiqui, a former pesticide lobbyist as our chief agriculture trade representative at the office of the United States Trade Representative.