The House Ways & Means Trade Subcommittee this week launched the “first in a series of hearings about how U.S. trade policies affect specific sectors of the economy,” according to an email by press secretary Lauren Blair Aronson, leading off with the agriculture sector.
[Daily News| June 15, 2016 |Inside US Trade]
The June 14 hearing on expanding U.S. agriculture exports and eliminating agricultural trade barriers turned into a major show of support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership from five witnesses representing producers of dairy, pork and horticulture products, as well as craft brewers and the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The witnesses also testified on a range of other trade issues including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Cuba embargo, but none of these took center stage to the extent the TPP did.
A House aide said the fact that this is one in a series of hearings leads him to believe the committee is beginning to hold hearings on TPP without expressly identifying them as such. Sources on both sides of the TPP debate have said that one or more hearings would likely be politically necessary before a vote on an agreement as broad as TPP could be held.
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