[author: Laura Anne Schierhoff]

On January 8, 2018, President Donald Trump spoke at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual conference. During his speech, President Trump said his administration is working on negotiating a good deal for farmers in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but did not go into the details. The agriculture industry is very concerned with the Trump Administration’s renegotiation of NAFTA and do not want to see the President pull out of the agreement altogether, like he has recently threatened. Many people in the agriculture industry believe NAFTA has been a success to date and did not want to see the agreement reopened in the first place. However, there are some updates that the agriculture industry would like to see in this renegotiation, including access to Canada’s dairy industry, which has been a closed market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary, Sony Perdue, has put forward a number of agricultural proposals for NAFTA, including dairy and poultry tariffs in Canada. The renegotiations have been strained for several months, after Canadian and Mexican officials rejected U.S. demands. The sixth round of renegotiations for NAFTA are scheduled to begin January 23, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec.