New Deal With Japan Great News For American Ranchers, Producers

Japan's chief tariff negotiator was in D.C. last week working to finalize the U.S. -Japan Trade and Investment Agreement recently announced by the White House.  U.S. Meat Export Federation President and CEO Dan Halstrom was in Tokyo when the agreement was announced, and said there was a sense of relief.

“I think the fact that a deal had been done on autos, which is obviously one of the big sticky points with Japan, kind of laid to rest any concerns there might have been on possible retaliation from the Japanese side, should a deal not have been reached," Halstrom said.  "So when you're talking about your second largest export market in the world, 2024 we saw about $1.9 billion on beef and about $1.4 billion on pork, for a total of about $3.3 billion in sales.”

We Need To Be On A Level Playing Field

Halstrom noted this latest trade deal follows a Japan trade agreement five years ago that leveled the playing field.

“In 2020, in Trump administration one, the Japan-U.S Ag agreement was announced, and that was really key, because we were not on a level playing field at that time with our global competitors," he said.  "And that phase one agreement in 2020 put us all on a level playing field, even though our duties are higher than some other countries. Currently we're at 21.6% on U.S. beef into Japan, but it got us on a level playing field, and the fact that we got this deal done, at least at the minimum, maintains that level playing field.”

Halstrom added it’s important to remember how far things have come for the red meat industry, because “it wasn't that long ago where we were at a severe disadvantage tariff wise.”

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