Since the Trump administration took office, we’ve all heard a lot of news about contentious negotiations with our largest export markets — Canada, Mexico and China. While the first two have already promised concessions to avoid high tariffs on U.S. goods, communication with Beijing has been more limited and contentious. However, President Donald Trump mentioned last week that he believes a deal with China is possible.
While many members of the ag industry were surprised, veteran trade negotiator Gregg Doud believes that a deal could be made.
“They are very transactional and we are, too, so I think there’s a deal to be had there,” Doud tells Tyne Morgan and Clinton Griffiths on the latest episode of Farm Journal’s Unscripted podcast. Doud is currently president and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation, but between 2018 and 2021 he was the chief agricultural negotiator in the Office of the United States Trade Representative. He led the grueling negotiations with China that resulted in the Phase One agreement in late 2019.
“That was brutal,” he says, noting that the language barrier complicates any negotiation with China. He tells the podcast hosts that reaching agreement required 33 sessions and hundreds of hours. “We got a lot of things changed,” he says of the Phase One deal. “Great progress there.”
Due to his experience with that agreement, he’s optimistic about future negotiations with Beijing. “At some point I think President Xi in China and President Trump will sit down again,” he says. “It a good thing to have the two largest economies on earth talking to each other.”
That said, he notes that China’s demand for agricultural imports from the U.S. has changed since the 2019 negotiations. Back then, he says, “Their demand for protein — beef, pork, poultry, dairy — was nearly insatiable.” Now, he says, they are less interested in importing meat. “They’d rather import the soybeans and corn and make the meal and feed it themselves and add that value there. But I still think protein is where it’s at, not just in China but around the world. That’s our advantage.”
Opening new international markets is the goal of the new administration. Doud says that agreements with the European Union, Brazil, India and some other possible partners will be challenging. “We’ve been doing this trade stuff for a long time,” he says. “All the easy stuff was done a long time ago.”
