WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Thursday for legislation to provide $1 billion to Israel to replenish its “Iron Dome” missile-defense system, just two days after the funding was removed from a broader spending bill.
As voting continued, the House backed the measure by 360 to 8.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Chris Reese)
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior U.S. Democrat said on Thursday that multiple congressional committees will investigate a drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians last month, to determine what went wrong and answer questions about future counterterrorism strategy.
“This is an issue that several committees are going to look at, and we’ve already started to do that,” Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, told reporters.
The U.S. military apologized on Friday for the Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed as many as 10 civilians, including seven children, calling it a “tragic mistake.”
The Pentagon had said the strike targeted an Islamic State suicide bomber who posed an imminent threat to U.S.-led troops as they completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The intelligence failure raised hard questions about future risks, particularly whether the United States can keep track of threats from Afghanistan without a presence in the country.
“Particularly as we are going to be moving to an over-the-horizon strategy, we need to understand exactly what went wrong and what that means in terms of the limits of what we are able to do,” Schiff told a meeting with journalists sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
“Over-the-horizon” refers to counterterrorism efforts from outside Afghanistan, such as drone strikes from bases located 1,000 miles from their targets.
The confirmation of civilian deaths provided further fuel to critics of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, which generated the biggest foreign policy crisis yet for President Joe Biden’s administration.
Many of Biden’s fellow Democrats, as well as Republicans, have criticized the conduct of the withdrawal. Congressional committees have scheduled hearings with top administration officials.
Schiff said he backed the withdrawal. “We can’t occupy everywhere,” he said. “Today there is a greater risk in other parts of the world than there is in Afghanistan.”
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
By Marcelo Teixeira
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Farmer David Armstrong recently finished planting what is likely the most challenging crop his family has ever cultivated since his ancestors started farming in 1865 – 20,000 coffee trees.
Except Armstrong is not in the tropics of Central America – he is in Ventura, California, just 60 miles (97 km) away from downtown Los Angeles.
“I guess now I can say I am a coffee farmer!” he said, after planting the last seedlings of high-quality varieties of arabica coffee long cultivated in sweltering equatorial climates.
Coffee is largely produced in the Coffee Belt, located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, where countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia and Vietnam have provided the best climate for coffee trees, which need constant heat to survive.
Climate change is altering temperatures around the globe. That is harming crops in numerous locales, but opening up possibilities in other regions. That includes California and Florida, where farmers and researchers are looking at growing coffee.
Armstrong recently joined a group of farmers taking part in the largest-ever coffee growing endeavor in the United States. The nation is the world’s largest consumer of the beverage but produces just 0.01% of the global coffee crop – and that was all in Hawaii, one of only two U.S. states with a tropical climate, along with southern Florida.
Traditional producers of coffee such as Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam have suffered from the impact of extreme heat and changing rain patterns. Botanists and researchers are looking to plant hardier crop varieties for some of those nations’ coffee growing regions.
Top producer Brazil is going through the worst drought in over 90 years. That was compounded by a series of unexpected frosts, which damaged about 10% of the trees, hurting coffee production this year and next.
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
“We are getting to 100,000 trees,” said Jay Ruskey, founder and chief executive of Frinj Coffee, a company that offers farmers interested in coffee growing a partnership package including seedlings, post-harvest processing and marketing.
Ruskey says he started trial planting of coffee in California many years ago but told few about it. He said he only “came out of the closet as a coffee farmer” in 2014, when Coffee Review, a publication that evaluates the best coffees every crop year, reviewed his coffee, giving his batch of caturra arabica coffee a score of 91 points out of 100.
Frinj is still a small coffee company targeting high-end specialty buyers. Frinj sells bags of 5 ounces (140 grams) for $80 each on its website. As a comparison, 8-ounce packages of Starbucks Reserve, the top-quality coffee sold by the U.S. chain, sell for $35 each. Frinj produced 2,000 pounds (907 kg) of dry coffee this year from eight farms.
“We are still young, still growing in terms of farms, post-harvest capabilities,” said Ruskey. “We are trying to keep the price high, and we are selling everything we produce.” The venture is already profitable,” he said.
The company has been growing slowly since, with Armstrong’s 7,000-acre (2,833-hectare) Smith Hobson Ranch one of the latest, and largest, to partner with Ruskey.
“I have no experience in coffee,” said Armstrong, who typically grows citrus fruits and avocados, among other crops.
To boost his chances of success, he installed a new irrigation system to increase water use efficiency and has planted the trees away from parts of the ranch that have been hit by frosts in the past.
Coffee uses 20% less water than most fruit and nut trees, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Water has become scarce in California after recent droughts and forest fires. Many farmers are switching crops to deal with limits on water use.
Giacomo Celi, sustainability director at Mercon Coffee Group, one of the world’s largest traders of green coffee, said the risks of cultivating coffee in new areas are high.
“It seems more logical to invest in new coffee varieties that could be grown in the same current geographies,” he said.
FLORIDA HOPES
As the climate warms in the southern United States, researchers at the University of Florida (UF) are working with a pilot plantation to see if trees will survive in that state.
Scientists have just moved seedlings of arabica coffee trees grown in a greenhouse to the open, where they will be exposed to the elements, creating the risk that plants could be killed by the cold when the winter comes.
“It is going to be the first time they will be tested,” said Diane Rowland, a lead researcher on the project.
Rowland said researchers are planting coffee trees close to citrus, an intercropping technique used in other parts of the world as larger trees help hold winds and provide shade to coffee trees.
The project, however, is about more than just coffee cultivation. Alina Zare, an artificial intelligence researcher at UF’s College of Engineering, said scientists are also trying to improve how to study plants’ root systems. That, in turn, could help in the selection of optimal coffee varieties for the region in the future.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. weather agency, annual mean temperatures were at least 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) above average for more than half the time in the long-term measuring stations across the United States’ southeastern region in 2020.
Florida experienced record heat last year, with average temperatures of 28.3 C (83 F) in July, and 16.4 C (61.6 F) in January. That is hotter than Brazil’s Varginha area in Minas Gerais state, the largest coffee-producing region in the world, which averages 22.1 C (71.8 F) in its hottest month and 16.6 C (61.9 F) in the coldest.
“With climate change, we know many areas in the world will have difficulties growing coffee because it is going to be too hot, so Florida could be an option,” Rowland said.
(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira in New York; Editing by David Gaffen and Matthew Lewis)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration plans to ease in early November COVID-19 pandemic-related travel restrictions that have barred people from much of the world from entering the United States starting in early 2020.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still must issue a formal order that will provide details on the new rules and when they will begin.
Here is a look at the U.S. travel restriction policy.
WHO CAN TRAVEL TO THE UNITED STATES?
– The United States will lift travel restrictions on 33 countries including China, India, Brazil, Iran, South Africa and most of Europe for travelers who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 that were imposed starting in early 2020.
– Travelers will still need to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days of departing for the United States.
– Until the new rules take effect, most foreign nationals who have been in the 33 countries for 14 days prior to departure cannot travel to the United States.
– Foreign nationals from all countries, with few exceptions, will need vaccinations to travel to the United States by air.
– The CDC has not yet said whether foreign nationals who recently had COVID-19 and are not currently eligible to be vaccinated will be allowed to travel to the United States.
WHAT VACCINES WILL BE ACCEPTED?
– It is not certain what vaccines the CDC will accept beyond the three already authorized in the United States – those from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson – or what proof must be presented. The Biden administration told airlines on Tuesday that it was still deciding what vaccines will be accepted.
– The CDC pointed to its prior guidance when asked by Reuters what vaccines it will accept. “The CDC considers someone fully vaccinated with any FDA-authorized or approved vaccines and any vaccines that (the World Health Organization) has authorized,” spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said.
WHAT ROLES WILL AIRLINES PLAY?
– It is expected that travelers will need to sign a form attesting to their vaccination and airlines will check passengers’ documents to certify compliance with the vaccine rules.
– Airlines currently check for proof of a negative COVID-19 test before travelers depart.
– The CDC will also issue new contact-tracing rules before the restrictions are lifted that will require international passengers to give email and phone contact information so public health authorities can reach them if needed, including if they are seated near someone who tests positive for COVID-19.
WHAT HAPPENS TO UNVACCINATED AMERICAN TRAVELERS?
– Americans traveling from abroad who are not vaccinated will face tougher rules than those who are vaccinated, including needing to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within a day of travel and proof of purchasing a viral test to be taken after arrival. Vaccinated Americans must show proof of a negative test within three days of returning to the United States.
– Exceptions from the vaccine requirements include children not yet eligible for shots.
– The Biden administration expects humanitarian exemptions will be granted for certain foreign nationals who agree to be vaccinated upon arrival in the United States, according to a White House official and a document seen by Reuters. The Biden administration expects such exemptions will be very limited.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham)
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a high-stakes standoff over the U.S. debt ceiling, congressional Republicans believe they see a chance to scale back President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic agenda while boosting their odds of retaking Congress in 2022.
The Republican gambit passed an initial political test on Tuesday, when the House of Representatives voted 220-211 along party lines to approve a measure to suspend the $28.4 trillion debt ceiling and fund the federal government beyond Sept. 30, when the current fiscal year ends.
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that his caucus, which holds half the chamber’s 100 seats, will block it, seeking to frame the vote as a referendum on a $3.5 trillion Biden domestic spending package the House and Senate will take up in coming weeks.
The stakes are high. Failing to fund federal agencies past Sept. 30 could trigger the third partial government shutdown in a decade and a failure to suspend the debt ceiling by mid-October brings the risk of a historic default that could shake financial markets and even spark a recession.
Both McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have used the word “catastrophic” to describe the fallout from a default.
“America must never default. We never have and we never will,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday. “The debt ceiling will be raised, as it always should be. But it will be raised by the Democrats.”
Republicans, while insisting they want to avoid a crisis, could be relatively insulated from any threat of default.
“The American people will say, ‘I’m mad at everybody’,” Senator James Lankford told Reuters. “But I don’t know that it becomes the fault of the group that’s in the minority in the House, in the minority in the Senate and not in the White House.”
A Sept. 18-20 Morning Consult poll showed that 42% of registered voters would blame both parties equally for any default, with another 33% blaming Democrats but only 16% blaming Republicans.
McConnell and his fellow Republicans want Democrats to suspend the debt ceiling on their own through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation, which Democrats have already used to pass a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and intend to use again for Biden’s domestic spending plan.
Schumer denies that the debt-ceiling debate has anything to do with Biden’s agenda and has accused McConnell of “engaging in fantastical feats of sophistry.”
The Treasury Department will exhaust its borrowing authority sometime in October unless the debt limit is suspended. The Democratic bill would suspend the limit on government borrowing through December 2022.
DEMOCRATS DIVIDED
Moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are objecting to the size of Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion package, while House progressives insist they will reject anything smaller. Republicans contend that forcing Democrats to own the debt-ceiling suspension could further undermine their unity and lead to a smaller package.
“There are a lot of moderate Democrats here in the Senate, and for that matter, in the House, who have concerns about the level of spending. It’s a stratospheric amount,” said Senator John Thune, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican.
Republicans also see the debate as a way to draw a bright ideological line between themselves and Democrats, who they claim are being led by self-declared socialists including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“What’s at stake is not simply a temporary hitting of the debt ceiling or defaulting temporarily or anything like that. It’s really whether we’re going to sit back and let them embed socialism into the institutions of our government,” Senator Kevin Cramer told Reuters.
Some Republicans, who worry about being blamed for a failed vote, have suggested that they could give Democrats consent to pass the debt ceiling and funding measure on a simple majority. But Republican Senator Ted Cruz vowed to block that route.
Others said that their high-profile stand against the Biden agenda could help Republicans turn out the vote in the November 2022 election that will determine control of Congress.
“Anytime you’re having a fight over taxes and spending, it’s good for Republicans,” Thune, who is seeking reelection in South Dakota, told reporters when asked if the showdown could aid Republican candidates.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)
By Daina Beth Solomon
CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico and the United States were on Wednesday preparing to fly more Haitian migrants away from chaotic U.S.-Mexico border camps, as pressure mounted on U.S. President Joe Biden to stop expulsions of Haitians to their poor, disaster-hit homeland.
U.S. authorities have deported more than 500 Haitians since Sunday from a camp housing thousands of mostly Haitian migrants on the U.S. side of border, by the small Texan city of Del Rio.
Such deportation flights back to Haiti would continue, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.
At the same time, Mexico has begun flying migrants away from the U.S. border, as well as sending some by bus, towards its border with Guatemala in the south.
U.S. politicians have criticized Biden’s handling of the situation with some opponents calling it a “disaster.”
U.S. authorities have ordered an investigation into an incident in which mounted U.S. border agents used their reins like whips to intimidate migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande border river.
Photographs of the incident sparked anger and the Biden administration said the agents had been pulled from front-line duties.
The deportations came amid profound instability in the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, where a presidential assassination, rising gang violence and a major earthquake have spread chaos in recent weeks.
Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N refugee agency, has warned that U.S. expulsions to such a volatile situation might violate international law.
Hundreds of the migrants have also gathered on the Mexican side by Ciudad Acuna, across from Del Rio. The migrants crossed back over the Rio Grande, to retreat from the U.S. camp because of shortages of food and poor conditions there.
On Tuesday, after talks with Haitian government representatives, Mexico said repatriation flights would be offered to those “who wish to return to their country”.
‘IT’S DIFFICULT’
While reports abound of Haitians across Latin America heading towards the United States, some are having second thoughts.
In Ciudad Acuna, Haitian migrant Maurival Makenson, 31, said his older sister was making her way to the border from Colombia but he was trying to persuade her to turn back.
“I tell her it’s difficult to get papers, there’s deportation,” he said.
Some of the deported Haitian migrants on Tuesday reacted angrily as they stepped off flights in Port-au-Prince after spending thousands of dollars on arduous voyages from the troubled Caribbean nation via South America hoping for a better life in the United States.
Some 130 people have traveled on Mexican flights to the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa, and another 130 people to the city of Tapachula on the Guatemala border, a Mexican government official said.
On Tuesday evening, officers from Mexico’s national migration institute (INM) entered two budget hotels on a small street in Ciudad Acuna and escorted about two dozen migrants, including toddlers, onto vans.
One woman, speaking from behind a partition, told Reuters she did not know where they were being taken.
(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Drazen Jorgic, Robert Birsel)
By Timothy Aeppel
(Reuters) – Shortages of masks and gloves that marked the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic have spread to a host of other items needed at medical facilities in the United States, from exam tables and heart defibrillators to crutches and IV poles.
It can now take up to five months to get some types of exam tables, for instance, compared to three to six weeks before the pandemic, according to CME Corp, a distributor of medical equipment that handles over 2 million products.
“Right now, because of the supply chain stress that’s being caused by COVID, almost everything is delayed,” said Cindy Juhas, CME’s chief strategy officer. “A lot of the stuff we sell is not sitting in a warehouse where you just call and say send it over. It needs to be built.”
But shortages of raw materials, including plastics, metals, glass, and electronics, have hampered production.
In the case of exam tables, tight supplies of electronic controllers, metal, and even the foam padding used to build them are hampering producers, Juhas said.
The shortfalls – which coincides with a hospital staffing squeeze that is forcing some facilities to ration care during the latest surge in COVID cases – are part of a larger supply-chain disruption that has snarled the movement of goods around the world in the wake of the pandemic.
In many cases, U.S. producers are waiting for parts or finished goods produced overseas which are delayed or waiting in jammed seaports. Last week, the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach announced a record 60 container vessels were waiting offshore to unload their goods.
The auto industry is perhaps the most visible example of how shortages are radiating through the economy and hitting consumers – with car lots outside many factories filled with vehicles waiting for scarce computer chips.
Tight supplies mean higher prices, which has fueled fears of a wave of sustained inflation.
CME, based in Warwick, Rhode Island, closely monitors its 100 largest suppliers and has seen prices on items from those companies increase from 3% to 20% since the start of the year, depending on the item. Some producers have hiked prices three times this year, said Juhas. Normally, price increases occur just once as the start of the year.
Many of the items in short supply have nothing to do with treating COVID. At CME, heart defibrillators that used to take two weeks to deliver now require three months.
“They normally have all the parts, so they put them together and put it on a truck,” she said. “But now they’re just waiting for parts.”
Even mundane items are snagged. Portable plastic toilets – used in hospital rooms so patients don’t have to walk to the bathroom – now are back-ordered three to four months. “That’s an item you usually can order and get right away,” said Juhas, who said she expects the larger array of supply problems to linger well into next year.
“And that’s with a lot of luck,” she added, “and with COVID getting under control.”
To be sure, some backlogs are easing. Early in the pandemic, the sudden surge in demand for the special refrigerators and freezers needed to store vaccines overwhelmed producers like Horizon Scientific Inc, a division of Standex International Corp, which operates a factory in Summerville, South Carolina. The refrigerators are distributed by CME.
Brian Shaffer, the company’s marketing and business development manager, said it takes three months to deliver its larger, 30-cubic-foot vaccine refrigerators – about double what the company would like. “We still struggle a little bit because of the components that go into them,” he said.
But delivery of smaller vaccine refrigerators, which are in demand now for doctor’s offices and pharmacies, are back to normal and can be shipped in five or 10 days.
(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel in New York; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrea Ricci)
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Monday extended restrictions at its land borders with Canada and Mexico through Oct. 21 that bar nonessential travel such as tourism by foreigners despite Ottawa’s decision to open its border to vaccinated Americans.
Canada on Aug. 9 began allowing fully vaccinated U.S. visitors for nonessential travel. The United States has continued to extend the extraordinary restrictions on Canada and Mexico on a monthly basis since March 2020, when they were imposed to address the spread of COVID-19.
The latest monthly extension goes through Oct. 21, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters Monday.
Zients said nearly all foreign nationals traveling to the United States by air will need to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination starting in early November.
He said “we do not have any updates to the land border policies at this point.”
U.S. lawmakers have been pushing the White House to lift restrictions that have barred non-essential travel by Canadians across the northern U.S. border since March 2020.
The U.S. land border restrictions do not bar U.S. citizens from returning home.
Republican Montana Senator Steve Daines said Monday the White House’s “continued refusal to open the northern border is inexplicable and is devastating Montana border communities and our economy.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)
By Matt Spetalnick and Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged on Friday to encourage more Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel as he hosted a virtual meeting with Israeli and Arab counterparts to mark the first anniversary of a set of landmark diplomatic agreements.
The event – held with Blinken’s counterparts from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco – was the Biden administration’s highest-profile embrace of the so-called Abraham Accords, which were widely seen as a diplomatic success for Republican former President Donald Trump.
Democratic President Joe Biden has backed the deals since taking office in January, and senior aides have said they want more Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel after decades of enmity. But the administration until now had been cool to the idea of commemorating the anniversary of the accords.
On Friday, however, Blinken hailed their diplomatic and economic benefits, saying: “This administration will continue to build on the successful efforts of the last administration to keep normalization marching forward.”
He said the Biden administration would help foster Israel’s growing ties with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco – as well as Sudan, which also reached a breakthrough with Israel last year – and would work to deepen Israel’s relationships with Egypt and Jordan, which have long-standing peace deals.
And Blinken said Washington would encourage more countries to follow their lead. “We want to widen the circle of peaceful diplomacy,” he said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid agreed, saying: “This Abraham Accords club is open to new members as well.”
The leaders of Israel, the UAE and Bahrain signed the accords at the White House last September. Israel and Sudan announced in the following month that they would normalize relations, and Morocco established diplomatic ties with Israel in December, after Biden defeated Trump in the U.S. election.
Palestinian officials said they felt betrayed by their Arab brethren for reaching deals with Israel without first demanding progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state.
Some critics said Trump had promoted Arab rapprochement with Israel while ignoring Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
But Blinken, who has sought to repair ties with the Palestinians badly damaged under Trump, said: “We all must build on these relationships and growing normalization to make tangible improvements in the lives of Palestinians, and to make progress toward the long-standing goal of advancing negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration plans to take a tougher stance toward meatpacking companies it says are causing sticker shock at grocery stores.
Four companies control much of the U.S. meat processing market, and top aides to President Joe Biden blamed those companies for rising food prices in a blog on Wednesday.
As part of a set of initiatives, the administration will funnel $1.4 billion in COVID-19 pandemic stimulus money to small meat producers and workers, administration aides said in the blog post. They also promised action to “crack down on illegal price fixing,” White House aides said in the blog post.
Four companies slaughtered about 85% of U.S. grain-fattened cattle that are made into steaks, beef roasts and other cuts of meat for consumers in 2018, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The big four processors in the U.S. beef sector are: Cargill, a global commodity trader based in Minnesota; Tyson Foods Inc, the chicken producer that is the biggest U.S. meat company by sales; Brazil-based JBS SA, the world’s biggest meatpacker; and National Beef Packing Co, which is controlled by Brazilian beef producer Marfrig Global Foods SA.
The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shares of Tyson briefly dipped in higher-volume trade after the Reuters report.
Price increases in beef, pork and poultry have driven half of the increased prices Americans have paid for food they eat at home since December, the White House said. And the administration sees those companies collecting too much profit after the stimulus helped prop up demand for their products.
“We’ve helped sustain this market, and it’s frustrating to see these companies turn around and raise prices,” Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in an interview. “What we see here smacks of pandemic profiteering and that is the behavior the administration finds concerning.”
Rising inflation has posed a serious threat to Biden’s efforts to get a grip on the COVID-19 pandemic – his top priority as president – and engineer an economic recovery from the recession it caused.
The Biden administration has responded to these issues partly by ramping up efforts to crack down on what it sees as anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior that could be increasing prices. A meeting of a new White House Competition Council created by Biden is set for Friday.
USDA and the Department of Justice have already been conducting an investigation into price-fixing in the chicken-processing industry.
“The goal of that over time is to bring these prices down,” said Ramamurti.
U.S. lawmakers are seeking increased oversight of the beef sector as concerns about anticompetitive behavior increase after the pandemic and a cyberattack on JBS USA.
The administration is “encouraged” by bipartisan legislation that could aid more price negotiation in the meat market, it said in the blog.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington, Additional reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
