During Tuesday’s Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) questioned Luke Lindberg, nominee to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, about reaching trade agreements.
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00:00Senator Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate this hearing. I want to just start actually by making a couple of comments about nutrition programs and food programs, SNAP and WIC, and school meals, and especially food banks, because I know we're awaiting to see what the Republican budgets will look like coming out of the House, and I'm quite concerned about what I'm hearing about this.
00:24So I just want to draw my colleagues' attention to a couple of things I had an opportunity to do in Minnesota last week, which is to visit food shelves in Fairmont, Minnesota, Heaven's Table, and also Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, the Lakes Area Food Shelf, and these are places where the community really comes together to make sure that people can put food on the table, and what we, of course, see when we go to see these food banks are working families, seniors, often people who are working but their incomes are not high enough to be able to afford groceries all month long, people living with disabilities,
00:54these are the folks that are relying on these food banks. And we have seen, interestingly, in Minnesota, and I bet, colleagues, it's the same around the country. Since January, food shelves have seen a significant increase in new families, often people coming into the door, coming through the door for the very first time.
01:12And, of course, this is a problem in all different kinds of communities, colleagues, but it's particularly a problem in rural communities. In this country, nine out of ten counties with the highest food insecurity rates are rural. In Minnesota, the counties that are seeing the biggest increase in visits to food shelves are also rural. For example, Nobles County, my colleagues from South Dakota will recognize Nobles County, as will Senator Klobuchar, in the far southwestern corner of Minnesota, has seen an increase in food shelf visits
01:42of nearly 195% of nearly 195% over the last year. So I draw attention to this, colleagues, because right now what's happening is USDA is cutting the funds that is helping food shelves meet their needs. The emergency food assistance program has been frozen and cut, and this has had a dire impact on the ability of food shelves in Minnesota and around the country to help people.
02:09I really want to put a point on this as we think about the big issues before us in the upcoming budgets and the reconciliation budget in particular.
02:20Now, Mr. Lindbergh, thank you for being here. Mr. Westhill, thank you for being here. Mr. Lindbergh, I want to use the time I have left to ask you about what we can do to create and preserve export markets. I really appreciated my colleague Senator Klobuchar's opening statements about how Minnesota farmers and producers are
02:38kind of whipsawed, kind of whipsawed, kind of whipsawed, really struggling with a lot of the chaos around trade and tariffs. And there's no doubt in Minnesota farm country that
02:45the first Trump administration, you know, Minnesotans were hit hard with these retaliatory tariffs. And in fact, in many places, farmers have yet to recover the lost market share that has, you know, from what happened in those years. And I appreciate it. In your testimony, you said that you were ready to work with your counterparts.
02:56across the administration to explore new markets. And I want to understand what that might look like. So here's an example. I have been strongly supportive of reopening the Colombian market to American poultry products, including turkeys produced in Minnesota. We're the number one turkey producer.
03:11And this was a long and arduous process to get these agreements, these new agreements put into place. And then of course, President Trump comes in, he announces a 25% tariff on Colombia and then he pulls that back. And then this month,
03:30new agreements put into place. And then of course President Trump comes in, he
03:36announces a 25% tariff on Colombia and then he pulls that back and then this
03:41month it was maybe all items from Colombia would receive a 10% tariff. So
03:46this is the environment that we come into as we try to figure out how to go
03:51forward. So my question for you is how will you plan it to work? How does, how
03:56do, how will you go about this? As you're trying to build relationships and new
04:00potential trading partners while at the same time existing trade agreements are
04:04getting torn up sometimes over issues that have nothing related to trade
04:08itself. Like how do you do the hard work of making agreements in that kind of
04:13environment? Thank you Senator for the opportunity to comment on that. Certainly
04:19I appreciate what's going on in southwestern Minnesota. I can see that
04:22corner of your state from my house actually not far down the road. So my
04:27objective is absolutely to work with the interagency partners and that I will
04:31engage with across the Treasury, Commerce, USTR functions. I think the Foreign
04:36Agricultural Service plays a vital role in those discussions. We have market
04:41intelligence that we provide back to feed into those discussions and I would
04:46look forward to providing that. But again I think one of the strengths I bring to
04:50the table for this role specifically, not only have I worked with Secretary
04:54Rawlins at the America First Policy Institute for the last three years. I've
04:59also engaged with many of my counterparts who are already confirmed for senior
05:04level roles at those other organizations and agencies that I'll be working with.
05:07And so to me it is a bringing together of like-minded folks to make sure that our
05:13farmers and ranchers opinions are well represented at those tables. Well thank
05:16you for that. I know I'm out of time Mr. Chair. I think I just want to make a point
05:21that it is difficult to reach agreements when there's so much
05:28inconsistency in the policy. And those agreements are reached because
05:33there's a sense of trust and a sense of continuity in whether those
05:37agreements are going to be abided by or not. And I think that that makes it
05:40particularly difficult for anybody to try to reach new trade deals in this
05:45environment. Thank you Mr. Chair.