8. Trade Policy

Exports have played an increasingly important role in the domestic production of agricultural goods in recent years, accounting for roughly 20% of U.S. agricultural production by volume.

Title III of the 2018 Farm Bill, which covers trade, authorizes and funds a number of export programs. It includes a large market development program that is designed to assist industry efforts to expand market demand for U.S. agricultural products abroad, and two export credit guarantee programs that guarantee loans made by U.S. private financial institutions to buyers of U.S. agricultural products in emerging markets.²⁹¹ The federal government will spend an average of $362 million on these programs annually from 2019 to 2023,²⁹² although this is likely to increase in future years as agribusiness groups have increasingly focused on expanding export markets. Industry groups successfully lobbied for a provision in the 2014 Farm Bill, for example, requiring the creation of an undersecretary of trade and foreign agricultural affairs position at USDA,²⁹³ which the Trump Administration subsequently established in 2017.²⁹⁴

U.S. trade policy should be aligned with the need to curb climate change and other environmental challenges. To continue to expand demand abroad for carbon-intensive products such as grain-fed meat, while simultaneously encouraging U.S. farmers to produce climate-friendly products through other policies, would send contradictory signals to farmers, industry groups, and citizens about U.S. agricultural policy, and would directly undermine

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efforts to achieve climate neutrality in agriculture. Congress should integrate climate concerns into agricultural trade policy, mandating that USDA and other government agencies focus on developing markets for climate-friendly products and discontinue support for carbon-intensive commodities.