What Do States Want From USMCA?

What do individual states expect now that USMCA is on the books and being enforced?

"One thing that's exciting about USMCA from state perspective; you know we talk about modernizing the the agreement and a lot of that focuses on digital trade aspects or biotechnology," said Max Moncaster with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. "It's not the sexiest, but we're also trying to modernize the governance framework under USMCA and that's really important for States."

"We're making a lot of changes to the committee on agriculture and some of the consultative committees," Moncaster continued. "And kind of outline how agriculture trade is managed between all three nations, and states have a really big role to play in that and not just on the promotional side but on collecting intelligence and feeding that back to our federal partners who are also trying to think about how they can support enforcement efforts that are going to be critical to this agreement."

Moncaster made his comments during a recent virtual event hosted by Farmers for Free Trade.

"Certainly our members were really instrumental in developing a lot of the priorities that were included in the agreement and are big advocates for the agreement now that it's coming to force."

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