WASHINGTON, DC – This week, more than two dozen industry leaders representing the rice farmer, merchant, and milling sectors traveled here to meet with Washington trade experts, hear policy updates, and advocate for leveling the global playing field on trade.
The first speaker was U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Chief Economist Dr. Seth Meyer who shared insights into the agriculture trade deficit, the country’s largest ag trading partners, and the farm economy in general. Meyer also took questions about how his team reconciles different data sets, in particular, planting intentions and consumer activity.
“NASS [the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service] looks at where we’ve been and we look at where we are today,” he said.
Asked about the impact of market disruptions such as weather events and the threat of either U.S. imposed or retaliatory tariffs on his office’s calculations, Meyer said his economists factor in what they can and make adjustments when necessary, but he acknowledged it is difficult, and that they tend to stick to incorporating policies in place now and not try to predict what policies may be in place at a later date.
Representatives of the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) then gave a detailed presentation of highlights from their study into global rice competitiveness, looking first at the overall U.S. rice market, and then going region by region through the rice producers, exporters, and consumers they studied (see
USA Rice Daily, March 10, 2025).
Researchers shared their method of running multiple simulations on global events to gauge the effects of country-specific policies on the industry and consumers in the United States and other major rice-producing and consuming countries. The models analyzed the impacts of removing all tariffs globally, export bans, tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), export charges, minimum support prices, and government-to-government contracts.
Whether it was the highly-mechanized and efficient systems in South America, or the overly-subsidized and low-cost labor systems in India and Pakistan, the message was clear – the U.S. rice industry is at a competitive disadvantage in every market in the world – even the U.S. domestic market.
“As we said when the first report was done in 2015 and again with the update this year, we know U.S. rice is at a disadvantage and the data in this report proves it,” said USA Rice President & CEO Peter Bachmann. “We will continue to cite this report and draw attention to it for lawmakers and policymakers in Congress and the Trump Administration.”