Agricultural News
Cattlemen Continue to Talk Ratification of USMCA- Colin Woodall Says House Vote Top DC Priority
Tue, 19 Nov 2019 07:56:27 CST
Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays caught up with the new National Cattlemen's Beef Association's Chief Executive Officer Colin Woodall to talk about the challenges of getting a vote on the U.S./Canada/Mexico agreement (USMCA).
The impeachment hearings in the House are making it hard to get a major piece of legislation across the finish line in that body. Woodall agrees, "Oh it absolutely does. Sucking all the oxygen out of Washington DC right now and even though Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time, right now it's kind of hard for them because everybody else is so focused on the impeachment action."
Woodall says he's not sure what the outcome of the hearings will be, but in the meantime, they will continue to push on the house to take action on a couple of outstanding items. Leading the list for the Cattlemen's association is USMCA. Woodall says "We need that certainty and we believe the speaker needs to go ahead and get a vote scheduled, and if she gets a vote scheduled, the votes are there to pass, we just need her to put it on the calendar."
When it comes to U.S producers being able to sell beef to China, Woodall says he's optimistic that some of the regulations will ease up, "For us its 2 things. It's the ban they have on our use of implants and it's the ban of Beta-agonists. Both are proven production technologies that have the science and our experience behind them and they have been used as a non-tariff trade barrier. So we have asked the President, Ambassador Lighthizer, and Ambassador Doud to try to take those trade barriers down. While we don't know the final decision on that, we do know that they have been on the table, so we are hopeful that we can get either them elminated or at least eased up a little bit to make access into China more beneficial to us."
Click on the LISTEN BAR below to hear more from Colin Woodall as he talks with Ron Hays in today's Beef Buzz.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR below for today's show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
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