ADVOCACY REPORT
JULIAN HERON,
Partner – Tuttle Taylor & Heron
28
Almond Facts
JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2017
Advocacy Report
A Busy Year Ahead in Washington
Expect a very active 2017! It has been a long time since Republicans have controlled the House, Senate
and White House. The first task to receive direct attention is meeting the new appointees in the new
Administration. On January 20, all political appointees were expected to resign and leave that day. This
extends from Cabinet officers and Ambassadors, down to Administrators. The new Administration is
tasked with filling each position or ask the previous employees to stay until they are replaced.
Our job is to meet the new people, especially at USDA,
USTR, Congress and the White House. Often new
appointees are not familiar with cooperatives or how they
work. Many will not know the importance of exports for
Blue Diamond Growers
or our long history developing new
products and new markets.
Quite a bit of time will be spent educating the new
people, at all levels of government, about water,
immigration, trade, food safety and marketing orders.
For example, the new people will need to know of
two major water issues we will focus on: the repeal of
EPA’s regulation on Waters of the U.S. and obtaining
additional water legislation for California.
Debate will begin on the 2018 Farm Bill, a policy tool
used to assist agriculture and provide food to the needy.
Historically, Farm Bills have great impact, affecting
international trade, food stamps, nutrition programs,
commodity programs, crop insurance and more.
Blue
Diamond
members directly benefit from some of these
programs, including the Marketing Order, Crop
Insurance, Market Access Program (MAP) and Value
Added Grant Program (VAGP).
As for trade negotiations, 2016 proved to be a
disappointment. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was
not addressed by Congress and the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations were
suspended. It is unknown when either will resume or in
what form. When they do, we will be closely involved.
Blue
Diamond Growers
will benefit from both, if either is adopted.
Blue Diamond Growers
remains concentrated on India,
Israel, China and the European Union. India has become
a very large market for
Blue Diamond
almonds. A duty
reduction is necessary due the smuggling of almonds into
India from Pakistan. The Indian Government has now
officially recognized this problem and is investigating it
at the border.
In Israel, we are working closely with U.S. negotiators
to obtain a zero duty for
Blue Diamond
almonds.
There is a free trade agreement with Israel, but a
high duty and quota remain on U.S. almonds.
China now has a free trade agreement with
Australia. This gives Australia a duty
advantage over U.S. almonds. A strong
effort is being made to eliminate the
disparity between the duty for Australia
and the duty for the U.S.
During the coming year, we expect
to be engaged in many other areas
including tax reform, food safety and
labeling regulations and anti-trust
issues facing cooperatives. It will be
a very busy year in Washington.
