WASHINGTON, D.C. — North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp said she can’t be the only one “bitching” about mistakes in U.S. trade policy.
Speaking Sept. 26 at the United Fresh Produce Association’s Washington Conference, Heitkamp urged produce industry leaders to raise their voices about losing export markets as a result of the Trump administration’s trade policy.
Heitkamp is in a pivotal reelection contest for her Senate seat with Republican Kevin Cramer.
“I can’t be the only fly in the ointment,” she said. “You can say let’s wait it out, let’s wait until next year — I want to ask you, how long does it take to lose a market?”
Noting that the U.S. represents just 5% of the global population, she said growers must produce for and sell to world markets to be successful.
“In discussions about nationalism versus globalism I can get myself in trouble because North Dakota is traditionally a very populist state,” she said. “To say you are not going to think globally is fine, but to say that we don’t live in a global economy is to say that the sun comes up in the West.”
Heitkamp said Trump’s decision to pull out the Trans Pacific Partnership was a mistake. If the goal was to exert pressure on China, she said the trade agreement could have helped.
“It seems like a really good way to (control China) would be to form alliances with regional trading partners and then lower tariffs, forcing behavior changes,” she said. “That’s the way we’ve always done it, we have done it with our allies.”
Meanwhile, the work of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement is far from over, she said.
Heitkamp said she has introduced a bill that would direct funds resulting from the steel and aluminum tariffs to industries that have been hurt by retaliatory tariffs.
“At this point, American agriculture is the tip of the spear — cherries, apples, soybeans, corn — we have to make sure that farmers ... are the ones who are compensated.”
Calling the Trump administration trade mitigation package lacking, she said North Dakota soybean growers are seeing Asian export orders dry up and prices drop well below the cost of production. While passing the farm bill is a priority, she said the best thing policymakers can do would be to get out of the way let farmers have their markets back.
“We have got to fight for rural America,” she said. “I’m in the fight and will tell you that one of the greatest challenges that we have is not that we don’t have a farm bill, it is that we don’t have a strong enough voice in trade policy and that could lead to long-term challenges for agriculture.”
