Ag Secretary Addresses Section 232 Tariffs' Effect on USMCA Passage

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told the House Agriculture Committee that a failure to ratify the NAFTA replacement "would be devastating," and he said he hopes all House members understand how damaging that would be to the agricultural economy. Perdue said there's a lot of energy and momentum among the groups lobbying for passage, but acknowledged that "the trickiness of the [Section] 232s" makes it more difficult to get the deal through. Because of the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, Mexico and Canada are levying tariffs on U.S. pork, cheese and other agricultural products.

Reuters quoted Perdue saying on Feb. 27 that he's been pushing the administration to lift those tariffs. "The president, we’re working hard to persuade him that the steel industry here, which is concerned, can be protected through a TRQ program here rather than tariffs and release the retaliatory tariffs." Multiple outlets quoted him saying Canada and Mexico are discussing how to lift them, and he says they're moving toward resolving the tariffs and having them replaced "by reasonable quotas."