Trump signed the order during a visit to an ethanol plant in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The executive order, he said, would “speed up reviews of biotechnology so that farmers can get access to critical scientific advances faster and reap the full benefits of American innovation for many years into the future.”

The White House said in a statement the order “will help eliminate delays, reduce developer costs and provide greater certainty about the review process for farmers.”

The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry group that represents companies such as Bayer, said the order was an “important step forward to ensure government policy does not hinder 21st-century biotechnology from addressing the many global challenges.”

“America is on the threshold of entering a new era of sustainable agriculture and food production, and it’s important we get this right for farmers, consumers, U.S. companies, and the world as a whole,” said Jim Greenwood, chief executive of the organization.

The order directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to work together on “common sense regulations and to develop awareness and education programs to gain acceptance of new technologies by consumers and global trading partners,” the National Pork Producers Council said.

The United States is falling behind countries such as Canada, Brazil and China that have established regulatory frameworks conducive to investment in the development of gene editing, said David Herring, president of the pork council and a hog farmer from Lillington, North Carolina.

“Today’s executive order paves the way for common sense regulation to keep America first in agriculture so that we remain the global leader in an economic sector that has offset the U.S. trade imbalance for decades,” Herring said.

Unlike traditional genetically modified organisms, in which a gene is added from another organism, gene editing works like the find-and-replace function on a word processor. It finds a gene and then makes changes by amending or deleting it.

Scientists can edit genomes more precisely and rapidly than ever before, and altered agricultural products could get to market more quickly and cheaply.

The U.S. told the World Trade Organization on Friday that it was planning to revise its regulations on importing, transporting and releasing GMOs.

— Roberta Rampton is Reuters’ White House correspondent based in Washington, D.C.; additional reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago; writing by David Alexander and Mohammad Zargham.

The post Trump simplifies reviews of genetically modified farm products appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to impose five per cent import tariffs on all Mexican goods starting on Monday if Mexico did not commit to do more to tighten its borders.

In a joint declaration after three days of talks in Washington, both countries said Mexico agreed to immediately expand along the entire border a program that sends migrants seeking asylum in the United States to Mexico while they await adjudication of their cases.

Trump said Mexico had agreed to take strong measures to “reduce, or eliminate” illegal immigration from Mexico.

However, the deal fell short of a key U.S. demand that Mexico accept a “safe third country” designation that would have forced it to permanently take in most Central American asylum seekers.

“The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended,” Trump said in a tweet on Friday evening.

Slowdown

Frustrated by a recent surge of migrants that has overwhelmed U.S. resources on its southern border, Trump had used the threat of tariffs to pressure Mexico into making concessions.

He has made hard line efforts to reduce illegal immigration a cornerstone of his presidency and it is certain to be a key issue in his re-election bid next year.

But business groups and even some close Republican allies were unhappy with the prospect of tariffs on the top U.S. trade partner, saying they would damage the economy.

Duties on Mexico would also have left the United States fighting trade wars with two of its three largest trading partners, and would further unnerve financial markets already on edge about a global economic slowdown.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said in Washington his team had also resisted U.S. requests to send deported Guatemalans to Mexico. He said he was satisfied with the deal.

“I think it’s a fair balance because they had more drastic measures and proposals at the start and we reached some middle point,” he said, emphasizing the importance to Mexico of having kept safe third country out of the deal.

He also highlighted U.S. support in the agreement for a Mexican proposal to jointly adress underlying causes of migration from Central America.

The asylum program to be expanded is commonly known as Remain in Mexico, and currently operates in the border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali and Ciudad Juarez.

Under the new deal, returned asylum seekers will spend long periods in Mexican cities such as Reynosa on the Texas border, where drug cartels frequently kidnap migrants.

The program was challenged in court earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other rights groups which say it puts asylum seekers in danger and violates U.S. and international law.

While a federal judge ruled to halt the policy, a U.S. appeals court overturned the decision, allowing the policy to continue as the legal challenge is ongoing. Through Wednesday, 10,393 mostly Central Americans have been sent back to Mexico since the program started in January.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the group would continue to press its legal challenge to the policy.

Under the deal, Mexico will also increase its efforts to stop illegal migrants from Central America traveling through Mexico to the United States. Those measures will include deploying the militarized National Guard security force to its southern border.

Ebrard said the National Guard deployment would start on Monday.

The two countries will continue discussions, to be completed in 90 days, on further steps, according to the declaration.

U.S. border officers apprehended more than 132,000 people crossing from Mexico in May, the highest monthly level since 2006. Trump, who has called the surge in migrants an “invasion,” had threatened to keep raising duties up to 25 per cent unless Mexico addressed the problem.

Agricultural targets

Mexico had prepared a list of possible retaliatory tariffs targeting products from agricultural and industrial states regarded as Trump’s electoral base, a tactic China has also used with an eye toward the Republican president’s 2020 re-election bid.

The United States slapped tariffs of up to 25 per cent on $200 billion in Chinese imports last month, prompting Beijing to levy its own tariffs on $60 billion in American goods. Trump said on Thursday he would decide later this month whether to hit Beijing with tariffs on an additional list of $300 billion in Chinese goods.

Economists have said that two trade disputes could damage supply lines and pinch consumers at a time when the global economic expansion that followed the 2008 financial crisis has started to sour and the risk of recession has risen.

Even the United States, one of the more solid performers on the economic stage, would not be immune to the downdraft.

The U.S. Labor Department reported on Friday that job growth slowed sharply in May and wages rose less than expected, raising fears that a loss of momentum in economic activity could be spreading to the labour market.

— Reporting for Reuters by Roberta Rampton, Susan Heavey, Makini Brice and Doina Chiacu in Washington, Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Diego Ore and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City, and Caroline Stauffer in Chicago; additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; writing by Paul Simao, Rosalba O’Brien Sonya Hepinstall and Frank Jack Daniel.

The post Trump calls off tariffs after Mexico vows to tighten borders appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Pence, known for taking a hard line against China, will travel to the Canadian capital to discuss trade issues, including Huawei, the world’s largest telecoms network gear maker, which Washington has moved to isolate.

“Canada has been a close ally in the way that they’ve approached their relationship with China — and there could be some conversation about Huawei,” the official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The battle spilled into Canada last year, when the company’s chief financial officer Meng Wangzhou was arrested on a U.S. warrant. She faces extradition to the U.S. on charges she conspired to defraud global banks about Huawei’s relationship with a company operating in Iran. She and the company deny the charges.

Shortly after her arrest, Canadian businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig were detained in China, and were formally arrested for espionage last week. Canada has called the detentions arbitrary.

China has also blocked imports of top Canadian commodities, including canola, in response to the dispute.

“Expect some very tangible outcomes from their discussion with regard to China that we’ll share with you tomorrow,” a second U.S. official told reporters.

The officials declined to say whether Pence would offer Canada assistance on the detentions and the trade stoppages, but noted Pence plans to make a separate address in the coming days about the “current state of affairs” in China.

— Reporting for Reuters by Roberta Rampton in Washington, D.C.

The post Pence, Trudeau to discuss Huawei, China trade issues in Ottawa appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

They agreed on a deal in principle to govern the more than trillion dollars of mutual trade after a year and a half of acrimonious negotiations concluded with a late-night bargain just an hour before a deadline on Sept. 30.

Since then, the three sides have bickered over the wording and the finer points of the deal and still had not agreed just hours before officials were due to sit down and sign it as the G20 summit kicks off in Buenos Aires.

Legislators from the three countries still have to approve the pact, officially known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), before it goes into effect and replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s spokesman only confirmed his attendance late on Thursday. Before signing the deal he continued to refer to as “the New NAFTA,” Trudeau told Trump the two should continue to work together to eliminate steel and aluminum tariffs.

Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto joined the ceremony on his last day in office.

Trump had vowed to revamp NAFTA during his 2016 presidential election campaign. He threatened to tear it up and withdraw the U.S. completely at times during the negotiation, which would have left trade between the three neighbors in disarray.

Trump forced Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the 24-year-old agreement because he said the existing pact encouraged U.S. companies to move jobs to low-wage Mexico.

U.S. objections to Canada’s protected internal market for dairy products was a major challenge facing negotiators during the talks, and Trump repeatedly demanded concessions and accused Canada of hurting U.S. farmers.

Dairy Farmers of Canada on Wednesday said the USMCA would “grant the U.S. oversight into the administration of the Canadian dairy system” and urged the government not to sign.

“It has recently come to light that the published text — which is available only on the U.S. Trade Representative’s website and in English — contains clauses regarding dairy tariff-setting authority that differ from what Canadian negotiators agreed upon,” Katie Ward, president of Canada’s National Farmers Union, said in a separate release Thursday, also urging Canada not to sign.

A side letter to the September agreement showed that Trump preserved the ability to impose threatened 25 per cent global tariffs on autos while largely exempting passenger vehicles, pickup trucks and auto parts from Canada and Mexico.

— Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Caroline Stauffer in Buenos Aires and David Ljunggren in Ottawa. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

The post U.S., Canada, Mexico sign trade deal after last-minute brinkmanship appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

In a big victory for his agenda to shake up an era of global free trade that many associate with the signing of NAFTA in 1994, U.S. President Donald Trump coerced Canada and Mexico to accept more restrictive commerce with their main export partner.

Trump’s primary objective in reworking NAFTA was to bring down U.S. trade deficits, a goal he has also pursued with China, by imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on imported goods from the Asian giant.

While the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) avoids tariffs, it will make it harder for global auto makers to build cars cheaply in Mexico and is aimed at bringing more jobs into the United States.

Since talks began more than a year ago, it was clear Canada and Mexico would have to make concessions in the face of Trump’s threats to tear up NAFTA and relief was palpable in both countries on Sunday that the deal was largely intact and had not fractured supply chains between weaker bilateral agreements.

“It’s a good day for Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters after a late-night cabinet meeting to discuss the deal, which triggered a jump in global financial markets.

In a joint statement, Canada and the U.S. said it would “result in freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth in our region.”

Negotiators worked frantically ahead of a midnight ET U.S. imposed deadline to settle differences, with both sides making concessions to seal the deal. The U.S. and Mexico had already clinched a bilateral agreement in August.

“It’s a great win for the president and a validation for his strategy in the area of international trade,” a senior administration official told reporters.

Trump has approved the deal with Canada, a source familiar with the decision said. U.S. officials intend to sign the agreement with Canada and Mexico at the end of November, after which it would be submitted to the U.S. Congress for approval, a senior U.S. official said.

Cost for Canada

The deal will preserve a trade dispute settlement mechanism that Canada fought hard to maintain to protect its lumber industry and other sectors from U.S. anti-dumping tariffs, Canadian sources said.

But it came at a cost.

Canada has agreed to provide U.S. dairy farmers access to about 3.5 per cent of its approximately $16 billion annual domestic dairy market (all figures US$). Although Canadian sources said its government was prepared to offer compensation, dairy farmers reacted angrily.

“We fail to see how this deal can be good for the 220,000 Canadian families that depend on dairy for their livelihood,” Pierre Lampron, president of Dairy Farmers of Canada, said in a statement.

“This has happened, despite assurances that our government would not sign a bad deal for Canadians.”

Lampron said the agreement also calls for Canada to “eliminat(e) competitive dairy classes” and accept “extraordinary measures to limit our ability to export dairy products.”

The deal also requires a higher proportion of the parts in a car to be made in areas of North America paying at least $16 an hour, a rule aimed at shifting jobs from Mexico.

Canada and Mexico each agreed to a quota of 2.6 million passenger vehicles exported to the United States in the event that Trump imposes 25 per cent global autos tariffs on national security grounds.

The quota would allow for significant growth in tariff-free automotive exports from Canada above current production levels of about two million units, safeguarding Canadian plants. It is also well above the 1.8 million cars and SUVs Mexico sent north last year.

But the deal failed to resolve U.S. tariffs on Canada’s steel and aluminum exports.

The Trump administration had threatened to proceed with a Mexico-only trade pact as U.S. talks with Canada foundered.

“It’s a good night for Mexico, and for North America,” Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray said.

The news delighted financial markets that had fretted for months about the potential economic damage if NAFTA blew up.

U.S. stock index futures rose, with S+P 500 Index e-mini futures up more than 0.5 per cent, suggesting the benchmark index would open near a record on Monday.

The Canadian dollar surged to its highest since May against the U.S. dollar, gaining around 0.5 per cent. The Mexican peso gained 0.8 per cent to its highest against the greenback since early August.

“Though markets were already anticipating an agreement, one source of worry will be swept away if a deal is made,” Yukio Ishizuki, senior currency strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo, said.

“That will lead to a rise in trust in the U.S. economy, so it’s easy for risk sentiment to improve.”

— Reporting for Reuters by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Roberta Rampton in Washington; additional reporting by David Shepardson and David Lawder in Washington and Diego Ore, Ana Isabel Martinez and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City.

The post Canada, U.S. deal saves NAFTA as trilateral pact appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Word of the deal came as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a 10 p.m. cabinet meeting to discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement talks.

A U.S. official said a few minutes earlier that the U.S. and Canada were “very close” to a deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has said Canada must sign on to the text of the updated NAFTA by a midnight Sunday deadline or face exclusion from the pact. Washington has already reached a bilateral deal with Mexico, the third NAFTA member.

Trump blames NAFTA for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and wants major changes to the pact, which underpins US$1.2 trillion in annual trade. Markets fear its demise would cause major economic disruption.

Negotiators from both sides spent two days talking by phone as they tried to settle a range of difficult issues such as access to Canada’s dairy market and U.S. tariffs.

The Canadian source said Canada had agreed to a cap on its automotive exports to the U.S. in the event that the Trump administration imposes global autos tariffs on national security grounds. The quota would allow for some growth in tariff-free automotive exports from Canada above current production levels, the source said.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, in Ottawa for the negotiations, scrapped plans to give her country’s annual address to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, a spokesman said.

Separately, Mexico’s economy ministry tweeted that it would hand the Mexican Senate the updated NAFTA text later on Sunday. If there was an agreement with Canada, the text would be trilateral. If not, it would be bilateral, the ministry said.

As part of any agreement, Canada looks set to offer increased access to its highly protected dairy market, as it did in separate pacts with the European Union and Pacific nations.

The influential Dairy Farmers of Canada lobby group — which strongly opposes the idea — said in a statement that it insisted “any final NAFTA deal should have no further negative impact on the dairy sector.”

“It is sad to hear from the media that concessions may have been made. The silence of the federal authorities, under the circumstances, is unacceptable and brings back bad memories,” Marcel Groleau, president of Quebec’s Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), said in a separate statement earlier Sunday evening.

“Is Canada’s future to produce Chevrolet Impala or to feed its population?” he said.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and White House adviser Jared Kushner have been updating Trump throughout Sunday on the talks, a U.S. source said.

U.S. business groups oppose turning NAFTA into a bilateral deal because the three nations’ economies have become closely intertwined since the original pact came into force in 1994.

Officials have blown through several deadlines since the talks started in August 2017.

— Reporting for Reuters by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Roberta Rampton in Washington; additional reporting by David Shepardson and David Lawder in Washington and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City.

The post Canada, U.S. reach deal to update NAFTA, sources say appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Auto stocks soared and financial markets firmed on the expectation that Canada would sign on to the deal by the end of the week and ease the economic uncertainty caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats that he would ditch the 1994 accord.

Details of gains and concessions in the deal were only starting to emerge on Monday. Trump threatened he still could put tariffs on Canadian-made cars if Canada did not join its neighbours and warned he expected concessions on Canada’s dairy protections.

“I think with Canada, frankly, the easiest we can do is to tariff their cars coming in. It’s a tremendous amount of money and it’s a very simple negotiation. It could end in one day and we take in a lot of money the following day,” Trump said.

Negotiations between the three trade partners have dragged on for more than a year, putting pressure on the Mexican peso and the Canadian dollar, both of which gained against the U.S. dollar after Monday’s announcement.

The political stakes are high for all three countries. Trump and Republicans in the U.S. Congress up for reelection in November want to ensure farmers and other voters whose jobs depend on trade with Canada and Mexico that the deal is sealed.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto wants to sign the agreement before leaving office at the end of November, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a national election expected by October 2019.

Canada plans to continue to negotiate, but would only sign a new agreement that is good for the country, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said.

Freeland is expected to travel to Washington for talks on Tuesday, spokesman Adam Austen said.

Trump spoke with Trudeau on Monday, his economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters. The deal with Mexico should serve as a “reset” for talks with Canada, Kudlow said.

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told a news conference in Washington that if Canada and the U.S. do not reach an agreement on NAFTA, “we already know that there will still be a deal between Mexico and the United States.”

Officials said they hope Canada will agree to the terms by Friday, when the White House plans to formally notify Congress that Trump will sign the deal in 90 days. Congress has to approve it.

“There are still issues with Canada but I think they could be resolved very quickly,” a senior trade official told Reuters in an interview.

If talks with Canada are not wrapped up by the end of this week, Trump plans to notify Congress that he has reached a deal with Mexico, but would be open to negotiations with Canada, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told reporters.

Some Republicans in the U.S. Congress called the deal a positive step but said Canada must be part of the new pact to avoid hurting U.S. jobs.

New auto rules

The U.S., Mexico and Canada do more than US$1 trillion in trade between them every year.

Trudeau spoke to Pena Nieto on Sunday and shared their commitment to reaching a successful conclusion of NAFTA “for all three parties” the prime minister’s office said.

The Mexico-U.S. discussions focused on crafting new rules for the automotive industry, which Trump has put at the heart of his drive to rework the pact he has repeatedly described as a “disaster” for American workers.

Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, said the group was optimistic about the new deal, though it was still reviewing the details.

The deal would require 75 per cent of auto content to be made in the NAFTA region, up from the current level of 62.5 per cent, a U.S. trade official said. A fact sheet describing the bilateral agreement specified the content would be made in the U.S. and Mexico.

The Trump administration said the deal improves labour provisions, in part by requiring 40 per cent to 45 per cent of auto content to be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour — a salary that could remove incentives for automakers to move jobs to Mexico.

The U.S. relented on its demand for an automatic expiration for the deal, known as a “sunset clause.”

Instead, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to a 16-year lifespan for the deal, with a review every six years that can extend the pact for 16 years, U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer said.

Mexico agreed to eliminate dispute settlement panels for certain anti-dumping cases — a move that could complicate talks with Canada, which had insisted on the panels.

Monday’s announcement lifted equity markets in all three countries, with shares in automotive companies standing out on relief that the deal appeared to end the uncertainty that has dogged the sector for months.

GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler gained between 3.3 per cent and 4.8 per cent, while Canadian auto parts makers such as Magna International gained 4.6 per cent.

— Reporting for Reuters by Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Sharay Angulo, David Lawder, Dave Graham, Andrea Hopkins and David Shepardson.

The post U.S., Mexico reach NAFTA deal, turning up pressure on Canada appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Asked by a reporter if he could envision maintaining free trade with Canada if NAFTA talks sour with Mexico, Trump said: “Oh sure, absolutely. It’s possible we won’t be able to reach a deal with one or the other, but in the meantime we’ll make a deal with one.”

He spoke at the White House alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on a visit to try to convince the U.S. leader of NAFTA’s merits as a new round of renegotiations began near Washington.

Asked about Trump’s comments at a news conference later, Trudeau said he was still optimistic about the chances of modernizing the 1994 trade pact.

“I continue to believe in NAFTA… so saying, we are ready for anything, and we will continue to work diligently to protect Canadian interests,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau also said that Canada was well aware of Trump’s unpredictability.

“That is certainly something that we are very much aware of and very braced for and conscious of but at the same time, Canadians expect us to work in a thoughtful meaningful way towards getting a good deal.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday accused Trump’s administration of trying to sabotage the talks with “poison pill proposals,” including demands for more favourable treatment for the U.S. side on car production, and a “sunset clause” to force regular negotiations.

In his appearance with Trudeau, Trump said “we’ll see what happens” when asked whether NAFTA was doomed.

“It’s possible we won’t be able to make a deal, and it’s possible that we will,” he said. “We’ll see if we can do the kind of changes that we need. We have to protect our workers, and in all fairness, the prime minister wants to protect Canada and his people also.”

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, one of Trump’s top trade advisers, downplayed the chances that a NAFTA termination would become necessary.

“We don’t hope it will, we don’t desire that it will, we don’t believe that it will, but it is at least a conceptual possibility as we go forward,” Ross said.

Aggressive proposals

Trade experts say the NAFTA talks are likely to stall in the face of aggressive U.S. attempts to sharply increase content requirements for autos and auto parts.

People briefed on U.S. proposals to be presented this week said Washington is seeking to sharply lift North American content threshold in car manufacturing.

The proposals call for North American content overall to rise to 85 per cent from the current 62.5 per cent. In addition, the United States wants to add a new 50 per cent U.S.-specific content requirement, something that was not in the earlier agreements.

“These will be met with widespread opposition from Canada and Mexico. I think it’s just a bridge too far,” said Wendy Cutler, the Asia Society’s Washington policy director and former chief U.S. negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal canceled by Trump.

The U.S. side sees strengthening the rules of origin for the auto industry as a way to bring back some auto parts production, including electronics, from Asia. But Mexico strongly opposes a U.S.-specific content requirement, which would limit the growth of its own car industry.

The difficult issue of rules of origin will be addressed mostly at the end of the current talks, according to a schedule obtained by Reuters. The negotiations were extended on Wednesday by two days to Oct. 17.

Other U.S. proposals opposed by Canada, Mexico and U.S. business interests include the five-year sunset provision, radical changes to NAFTA’s dispute arbitration systems, changes to intellectual property provisions and new protections for U.S. seasonal produce growers.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Wednesday the three nations had completed their negotiations on company competition policy, reaching an agreement that goes beyond previous U.S. trade deals to ensure “certain rights and transparency under each nation’s competition laws.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Roberta Rampton and David Ljunggren; additional reporting by David Lawder, Ginger Gibson, Makini Brice and Susan Heavey in Washington and Ana Isabel Martinez and Dave Graham in Mexico City; writing by Alistair Bell.

The post Trump says U.S.-Canada trade deal possible, excluding Mexico appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Businesses have been clamouring for rules to allow commercial drone flights, fearing the U.S. is falling behind other countries in developing a multibillion-dollar industry.

The Federal Aviation Administration turned a draft of the rules — the first major overhaul of the regulations — over to the White House on Oct. 23, and had said it expected them to be published in 2014.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget had not releases the draft by Wednesday. The office has 90 days to review proposed regulations, during which time analysts craft a cost-benefit analysis and meet with affected parties. The time frame often is extended.

Once published, the draft proposal will be subject to public comment, and it is likely to take at least a year to come into effect, according to legal and policy experts.

“We are continuing to work with our administration colleagues to finish the rule,” the FAA said on Wednesday. “Our goal is to get the proposal right.”

The rules deal with difficult issues such as potential licensing of drone pilots and aircraft and flight safety, according to industry sources.

They also must address the explosive growth of casual fliers with little knowledge of safety guidelines used by model-aircraft enthusiasts, industry experts say. The proliferation of inexpensive drones has led to more dangerous close calls with jetliners and crowds, the FAA says.

The rules also may deal with the ability of state and local authorities to regulate drones. The FAA controls the U.S. airspace, but numerous states and cities have also passed drone laws. The FAA may include a “pre-emption clause” in the draft rules to assert its precedence over other laws.

“The FAA does not want a patchwork of regulations that deal with operation of model aircraft,” said Mark Dombroff, a partner at the law firm of McKenna Long and Aldridge in McLean, Virginia.

Dombroff led a group including Textron Inc., Rockwell Collins Inc. and the Motion Picture Association of America that recently met with the FAA to press for pre-emption. While that probably won’t be in the first draft, it likely will emerge through public comments, he said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Alwyn Scott in New York and Roberta Rampton in Washington, D.C.

The post U.S. drone rules remain in hangar in 2014 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“It multi-tasks,” Obama said, describing how the law supports not only farmers and ranchers but poor families on food stamps, researchers working on biofuels, and businesses developing and exporting new products from rural America.

Obama signed the bill — which the Congressional Budget Office says will save $16.6 billion over 10 years compared to current funding — at Michigan State University, the oldest land-grant university in the nation. Using a different measure, lawmakers have estimated the savings at $23 billion (all figures US$).

Michigan is the home state of Senator Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the U.S. Senate agriculture committee, who was on hand for the signing along with a small group of Democratic lawmakers and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The White House invited 50 lawmakers, including Republicans involved in the years-long negotiation process that produced the final bill. But in a sign of ongoing tensions with Obama, no Republican lawmakers attended.

The president noted the compromises involved in the legislation, which runs to over 350 pages, and called the bill, passed with bipartisan support, “a good sign.”

He also urged lawmakers to keep the momentum going and pass bills to reform immigration laws, extend unemployment insurance, and raise the minimum wage.

The farm bill cut funding for food stamps to the poor by about $8 billion over 10 years, or about one per cent — a measure decried as too harsh by anti-poverty groups and too generous by Republicans, who sought even larger cuts.

Obama has made addressing the gap between rich and poor a major policy focus for his administration this year.

USDA’s Vilsack said there would be changes in the way his department delivers food stamps, but downplayed the impact of the cuts, carved out by cutting benefits to recipients who are also enrolled in a federal heating assistance program.

“I would expect and anticipate not a significant impact on the overall availability” of food stamps, he said.

Some 47.4 million Americans receive food stamps, according to USDA’s most recent figures. The CBO’s analysis of the farm bill assumes a $90 million reduction in food stamp funding for 2014 — which would amount to about $2 per recipient, if cuts were spread equally — rising to $800 million in 2015.

The bill ended nearly $5 billion in annual automatic payments to farmers and landowners, long criticized as a waste of taxpayer money, and consolidated a variety of overlapping conservation programs.

The bill also expanded a crop insurance program for farmers and left a host of other farm supports intact. It contained provisions on everything from farmers’ markets to funding into research of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer.

“The last five years have been the best five years in agriculture in the history of the country,” Vilsack told reporters traveling with Obama, noting farm income has been at record highs as exports surge.

“Obviously we want to continue that momentum, and that required the passage of a farm bill,” Vilsack said.

Obama announced his administration would do more to work with small rural businesses to connect them with potential investors and export markets.

Before the bill signing, Obama and Vilsack donned safety glasses and toured a pilot plant at the Michigan Biotechnology Institute, where researchers were working on scaling up a process that compresses waste material from corn crops into pellets to use for animal feed or to make fuel.

The center, a subsidiary of the Michigan State University Foundation, helps researchers and companies commercialize products made from plant materials, such as polylactic acid, a biodegradable material agricultural giant Cargill developed to make plastic bags.

The farm bill’s energy title will provide $800 million in loan guarantees over 10 years to small manufacturers and biorefineries, Vilsack said, describing how soybeans are used in Ford car seats and corn cobs are used in plastic soda bottles.

“There’s just an amazing opportunity here to bring manufacturing back,” Vilsack said.

– Roberta Rampton is a Reuters correspondent covering U.S. energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

The post Obama signs sprawling U.S. Farm Bill, lauds rural progress appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.