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WTD: Tai raises biotech corn issue with Mexican counterpart

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai raised biotech corn issues with her new Mexican counterpart, Secretary of Economy Raquel Buenrostro, at their first virtual meeting, Washington Trade Daily reported.Tai underscored “the importance of avoiding a disruption in U.S. corn exports and returning to a science- and risk-based regulatory approval process for all agricultural biotechnology products in Mexico,” WTD said.
Tom HaagThe National Corn Growers Association has been asking Tai to raise the issue in response to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s promise to enact a decree that would end imports of corn grown using biotech and certain herbicides by 2024.
An opinion piece by NCGA President Tom Haag was published last month in The Hill, a newspaper widely read by Congress and other Washington decision-makers, calling on USTR to file a settlement dispute under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement over the matter.
“If the decree is enacted, the negative impact will be felt by farmers in the U.S. and by the people of Mexico,” Haag noted. “We’re now looking to the Biden administration to intervene to ensure that corn exports to Mexico don’t come to a sudden stop.”
NCGA has said that raising the issue through a U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement dispute settlement “would allow for extensive debate and mediation and would head off a calamitous outcome.”
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