The National Pork Producers Council, in congressional testimony Wednesday, urged the Obama administration to send to Congress, and lawmakers to approve before August, legislation implementing the free trade agreement with Panama. Testifying before the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, NPPC President Doug Wolf, a producer from Lancaster, Wisconsin, said the United States cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.
Wolf said - there is no standing still when it comes to trade. If we do not implement the trade agreements we have negotiated, such as the Panama Trade Promotion Agreement, and fail to move ahead with new ones, we will forfeit those sales to foreign competitors who are aggressively negotiating free trade deals of their own. Wolf also requested that the free trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea be sent up and approved before Congress takes its month-long recess in August.
According to Wolf, - at this time of very tight budgets, America’s pork producers are not asking for U.S. tax dollars. What we are asking is that our government takes actions necessary to keep us competitive in global markets so that we can retain and expand those markets and, in turn, can keep creating new U.S. jobs. |