Trump Names Doud Chief Trade Negotiator and Trump Trade with Cuba

Trump Names Doud Chief Trade Negotiator and Trump Trade with Cuba

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
From the Ag Information Network, I'm Bob  Larson with your Agribusiness Update. 

 

**President Trump is nominating Gregg Doud, president of the Commodity Markets Council and a farm policy veteran, to be the administration's chief agricultural negotiator under the U.S. Trade Representative. 

  

Doud was a senior aide to the Senate Agriculture Committee from 2011 to 2013 and assisted in drafting what would become the 2014 farm bill. The Kansas native previously served eight years as chief economist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. 

  

**New measures unveiled by the Trump administration to restrict U.S. travel and trade with Cuba met with strong opposition from U.S. farm groups hoping to increase agricultural exports to the island nation. 

 

President Trump says the policy directive he signed in Miami is necessary to confront the "brutal nature of the Castro regime" and strengthen the U.S. embargo, but farm groups say it sets back their efforts to help feed the communist country. 

 

President Obama spent the final two years of his administration working to bring the two countries closer together, giving groups like the USA Rice Federation hope that its farmers could eventually begin selling rice to Cuba again. 

 

**EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt committed to publishing a new rule establishing which waters would be regulated under the Clean Water Act by the first three months of next year at the latest, in testimony before House appropriators today.

 

Pruitt's schedule seems ambitious, given that EPA has yet to propose withdrawal of the existing WOTUS rule, now stayed by the federal courts.

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