By Jessica Domel
Multimedia Reporter

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) is urging Congress and the Trump administration to continue its work to eliminate trade barriers and expand access for U.S. dairy products across the globe.

Ambassador Gregg Doud, NMPF president and CEO, told a U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee exports are critical for American agriculture.

“Last year, American dairy producers exported more than $8 billion in dairy products overseas equivalent to 18% of total U.S. milk production,” Doud said. “Much of that success is directly attributable to existing U.S. trade agreements, which have helped dairy exports increase by roughly $7 billion in the past 20 years. In fact, we run a dairy trade surplus with each of our bilateral trade deal partners.”

Doud, who served as the chief agricultural negotiator under the first Trump administration, said the country reached those heights despite being forced to operate at a significant disadvantage to our international competitors.

“While the European Union and New Zealand have been successfully negotiating trade agreements with key dairy importing countries, the U.S. has not kept pace,” Doud said. “In addition to pursuing greater market access, Congress and the administration have a responsibility to work together to enforce existing trade agreements.”

Inadequate trade enforcement has had real world consequences that restrict opportunities for American farmers, Doud said.

He outlined four regions of economic importance to the dairy industry they’d like the Trump administration to consider trade enforcement actions or negotiations with.

The first is North America.

“Roughly 44% of total U.S. dairy exports, worth about $3.7 billion, are shipped to our nearest trading partners Canada and Mexico,” Doud said. “While Mexico has largely been a positive trading partner, Canada has not.”

Mexico represents 36% of total U.S. consumer dairy product exports for products like cheese, butter and fluid milk and 28% of total U.S. dairy ingredient exports, which are products like whey protein, nonfat dry milk and whole milk products.

Total U.S. dairy exports to Mexico are worth around $2.4 billion.

The U.S. exported about $1.2 billion in U.S. dairy products to Canada last year.

Doud said it’s an important market for U.S. dairy, but is also a more complex one.

“Unfortunately, Canada has a long history of attempting to undermine previously agreed to market access—a trend that has continued under USMCA through manipulative tariff rate quota policies and a systemic circumvention of USMCA’s dairy protein export disciplines,” Doud said. “Canada has cheated U.S. exporters out of the market access benefits promised to them under the agreements and has tried to dispose of growing volumes of artificially low-price dairy protein into global markets.”

A sizable portion of U.S. dairy exports to Canada are used for further food processing and then are returned to the U.S. in the form of finished foods for consumption.

Doud said the planned review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2026 is an opportunity to ensure Canada reforms its trade practices.

“To that end, we urge Congress and the administration to utilize a thoughtful and tailored approach to dealing with the outstanding issues with Canada while preserving dairy trade flows with our partners in Mexico,” Doud said.

The former ambassador also outlined concerns with dairy exports to the European Union (EU).

“The scale of our trade deficit with the EU is truly staggering. EU dairy producers export $3 billion worth the products to the United States while U.S. dairy producers export $167 million in dairy products to the EU,” Doud said. “In fact, the U.S. exports 15 times more cheese to Guatemala last year than to the entire European Union.”

The United States allows European exports to reach its markets smoothly and without much scrutiny, Doud said, but U.S. products face a moving target in exporting to the EU.

“If the lack of market access for U.S. agricultural products wasn’t enough, the EU has abused geographic indication (GI) rules over the past decade to target food and beverage products by banning American producers from using common names like parmesan and feta. The EU has essentially prohibited us from selling our products into Europe, as well as in key export markets where the EU has negotiated protections for its illegitimate GIs,” Doud said.

NMPF also asked the administration to ensure China is living up to the commitments it made in the Phase One trade agreement made during the first Trump administration.

“While the agreement has been an overall benefit to U.S. dairy, we are counting on the U.S. government to further negotiate with China to increase their purchases of U.S. dairy products by facilitating trade with lower tariffs protection for common names and timely approval of U.S. dairy manufacturing facilities,” Doud said.

The U.S. exported a record $803 million in dairy products in 2022.

Dairy exports to China fell to $584 million in 2024, and Doud said it has not reached its potential.

“Historically, our issues with China have been deep and serious. To improve upon this extremely important trading relationship, we have got to keep talking with each other to find solutions,” Doud said.

NMPF also highlighted a few concerns with exporting dairy products to India.

“I would like to touch on India, which has used high tariffs and unscientific certification requirements to block most U.S. dairy exports since 2003,” Doud said. “Should Congress reauthorize the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, we urge USTR to ensure India meets its market access obligations under the program.”

The U.S. Trade Representative revoked India’s GSP eligibility in 2019 due to India’s failure to meet its obligations to provide equitable and reasonable access to its market.

Last year, the U.S. exported $53 million in dairy products to India.

“There remains a strong appetite in the U.S. dairy industry to gain access to this sizable market, particularly as India’s demand for high-quality dairy outstrips present supply,” Doud said. “India maintains high tariffs on most dairy products. In addition, since 2003, most American dairy exports have been blocked from the Indian market due to high tariffs and unscientific and overly burdensome Indian dairy import certificate requirements.”

Doud told U.S. House Ways and Means committee members NMPF hopes Congress and the administration continue to pursue the America first trade policy and strike new trade deals that cut tariffs and tackle non-tariff trade barriers on U.S. agricultural products.

“We are hopeful that the U.S. government will take this dynamic as a challenge to stand up for us dairy producers and the U.S. agriculture,” Doud said.

The full hearing can be seen here.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Texas dairy farms produced more than 17 billion pounds of milk in 2024, up 2.8% from 2023, making it the third-largest dairy-producing state in the nation.