Wisconsin Farm Bureau is all about TPP

The highly unpopular trade deal apparently will be very good for agriculture

One Wisconsin group is hoping that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump really aren’t serious about their opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau is very supportive of the proposed TPP free-trade deal among Pacific nations that’s currently awaiting ratification. The group is also not so pleased that both presidential candidates have expressed opposition to it.

“I guess you could describe it as nervousness,” Farm Bureau president Jim Holte said. “You hope they’re just posturing themselves and whomever’s successful will come to their senses when they stop and look at how their administration manages trade for this country in the future.”

Holte’s group says if the trade deal is enacted, it will mean $92 million per year worth of increased exports for Wisconsin farmers.

Opposing the deal will be a raw deal for farmers now and into the future.

“It will have long-term impacts on future trade deals as far as what leverage and abilities we have to be a major player in those next trade deals to come,” he said.

Holte says approving the trade deal will, among other things, remove high cheese tariffs in places like Japan and Malaysia. Tariffs that, in some cases, can run as high as forty percent. Eliminating those trade barriers will greatly expand exports.

“We’re interested in leveling the playing field for a lot of products that we can then send throughout the world,” Holte said. “Over 90 percent of the world’s population is not in the U.S. “It’s a huge market and we’re extremely good at what we do in agriculture, and we’d like to take our products around the world.”