Conrad Blasts U.S. Trade Negotiators

Press Release

Conrad Blasts U.S. Trade Negotiators
Administration's Latest Concession Sells Out America's Family Farmers, Senator says

Senator Kent Conrad issued the following statement today criticizing the decision by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab to cut U.S. agriculture programs in order to move closer to a trade deal. Ambassador Schwab, the lead U.S. negotiator at the World Trade Organization's Doha round of world trade talks, proposed to cap the nation's farm subsidies without securing similar concessions from competing countries. The proposal would require Congress to rewrite the recently adopted Farm Bill.

"Ambassador Schwab appears to be negotiating against herself. She's certainly not negotiating in the interests of hard-working family farmers in North Dakota and elsewhere in the country. Under her position, family farmers stand to lose the farm income safety net and get nothing in return.

"Once again, this Administration's trade negotiators have made unilateral concessions with only a hope that our trading partners might later match those concessions. In the past, other countries have just pocketed our concessions and demanded even more from the U.S. while refusing to open their markets to our agricultural exports.

"There's an old saying, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Ambassador Schwab should be ashamed."

Source