Participants:
Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Committee on FinanceUnited States Trade Representative Robert ZoellickAllen Johnson, chief agricultural trade negotiator for the United StatesGlen Keppy, a third-generation family pork producer from Davenport, Iowapossibly other farm-state senators in addition to Grassley
Description:
Grassley and others have urged the Senate leadership to schedule a vote on Trade Promotion Authority for the President as soon as possible. The participants in this event will describe how U.S. agricultural trade negotiators, and especially U.S. farmers and agricultural producers, need Trade Promotion Authority now to open new markets for U.S. agricultural products. Trade Promotion Authority is especially important to jumpstart the World Trade Organization negotiations in agriculture. Negotiators have to meet timetables, deadlines and goals to reach the ambitious target of completing this phase of the negotiations by March 2003. The United States needs to lead this process and needs the maximum negotiating credibility that TPA provides in order to do that. If the United States doesn't lead, its competitors will set the agenda for the Geneva-based talks and determine the timing of the negotiations to their advantage, not to that of the United States.