Does not matter: The wake-up call that wasn’t

Nov 01, 2021

Presented by Farm Credit

With help from Helena Bottemiller Evich and Steven Overly

Quick Fix

— Diet-related diseases like obesity and diabetes made the U.S. much more vulnerable during the pandemic. Why isn't Washington talking about the connection?

— The White House announced it will ease tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU, lowering trade tensions that affected many U.S. agricultural exporters.

— The Biden administration is striking an optimistic note that Congress will soon pass the infrastructure bill and social spending package, as Democrats on the Hill grapple for a path forward.

HAPPY MONDAY, NOV. 1! Welcome to Morning Ag, where your host hopes everyone collected plenty of candy to snack on this week! Send story tips to xbustillo@politico.com and @ximena_bustillo, and follow us @Morning_Ag.

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DRIVING THE WEEK

THE WAKE-UP CALL THAT WASN'T: America's staggeringly high rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and so many other diet-related ailments have made the pandemic much worse. Yet there has been very little attention to the connection at the highest levels of government, reports Pro Ag's Helena Bottemiller Evich.

The problem is deeply entrenched and staggering in scale: More than 42 percent of American adults — about 100 million people — had obesity before the pandemic began, according to the CDC. Nearly three-fourths of American adults are overweight or have obesity, and roughly one in five children now have obesity. Researchers estimate that nearly two-thirds of Covid-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. were related to obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart failure.

A map of the United States highlighting the obesity rate in each state.

Where's the plan? In Washington, there has been no such wake-up call about the link between diet-related diseases and the pandemic. There is no national strategy, no systems-wide approach, even as researchers increasingly recognize that obesity is a disease that is driven not by lack of willpower, but by a modern society and food system that's almost perfectly designed to encourage the overeating of empty calories, along with more stress, less sleep and less daily exercise — setting millions on a path to poor health outcomes that's extremely difficult to break from.

MIA from the Covid response: Connecting the dots on diet-related diseases and the pandemic was never part of White House messaging on the virus and the suite of policies needed to respond to the crisis — something that didn't change when President Joe Biden took the reins, either.

"It's not central to the discussion at all," said Dan Glickman, who served as agriculture secretary during the Clinton administration and is now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He added: "It's a gigantic gap in the discussion about how health care relates to Covid and how it relates to the prevention of disease."

Vilsack goes it alone: The only high-level Biden administration official who routinely talks about the issue is Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — and he brings it up often. Vilsack likes to point out in his speeches, for example, that the government now spends more treating diabetes than the entire budget of the USDA, which is about $150 billion.

"It's a significant issue that requires elevation," Vilsack said in an interview. "We're moving the dials that we can move at USDA. I think, however, it takes more than that. I think it takes multiple departments focused on this and multiple leaders saying this is an issue that requires some attention."

What Team Biden has to say: The White House contends it is working on the issue. "The administration works daily to ensure there is a whole-of-government approach to our work on diet-related diseases, aligning work across multiple federal agencies, including HHS and USDA, among others," a White House official said in an email.

The administration points to FDA's recent (and long-delayed) voluntary sodium goals and increasing SNAP benefits. The official also noted the reconciliation deal struck this week includes expanded access to free school meals for nearly 9 million children and an extension of a new program to give 30 million children SNAP-like grocery benefits to help replace meals missed at school in the summer.

What about that White House conference? Read Helena's piece for more on what's happening with the push for a White House conference on food, nutrition and hunger. The gist: There are a lot of conversations underway.

This week: A Senate Agriculture subcommittee on nutrition is holding a hearing Tuesday on "the state of nutrition in America," so expect some more chatter about the topic in Washington. More on the hearing, including witness list, is here.

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CLOSING IN ON INFRASTRUCTURE AND RECONCILIATION: Members of the Biden administration still sound hopeful that passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the trillion-dollar climate and social spending package are coming soon, despite a series of delays and disagreements among Democrats.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Fox News Sunday that "we're the closest that we've ever been, and it looks like we're teed up for major action soon," reports POLITICO's Kelly Hooper.

Buttigieg's comments came amid increased frustrations on Capitol Hill over the lack of a firm deal and continually delayed votes on the bills. Both the infrastructure package and the spending plan have been in limbo for weeks as progressive and centrist Democrats butt heads over which provisions make it into the spending bill.

Across the pond: Biden is attempting to instill confidence overseas in the outlook for his agenda, particularly on climate change, as he attends the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

"I believe we will pass my Build Back Better plan and I believe we will pass the infrastructure bill," Biden said Sunday at a news conference in Rome, per Bloomberg. "I believe we'll see by the end of next week at home that it has passed."

Despite the positive messaging, Democrats still have plenty of negotiations ahead of them. Read more from our Hill team here.

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Trade Corner

FARMERS SET TO BENEFIT AS U.S.-EU TRADE TENSIONS EASE: The Biden administration announced it will ease tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU under an agreement reached Saturday, reports Pro Trade's Steven Overly . The deal resolves a Trump-era dispute that for years has tarnished trade relations between the longtime allies and resulted in retaliatory tariffs on multiple U.S. agriculture products.

The clearest winners of the new deal are industries that argue they never should have been dragged into the dispute in the first place, including many food and farm groups. The EU will cancel 25 percent retaliatory tariffs that have hampered exports of a wide range of American goods, drawing celebratory remarks from makers of whiskey, butter, pork and more.

"While the dispute centered around steel and aluminum, farmers were swept up in the turmoil as the EU clamped down on U.S. agricultural exports like orange juice, butter, cheese, pork, nuts and many more," American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said in a statement. "It's crucial that we now restore those trade relationships."

The EU was set to double its tariffs in June if the two sides had not agreed to start negotiations — a threat that terrified the affected industries, and one that Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo acknowledged "a business can't survive" in remarks on Saturday.

Now some of those exporters are pushing the U.S. to go further and settle trade disputes with the U.K. and China that have kept tariffs in place on American goods.

"We welcome the announcement that the U.S. and EU have come to an agreement on the [Section] 232 steel and aluminum tariffs and the EU has pledged to eliminate retaliatory tariffs against U.S. exports," Maria Zieba, assistant vice president of the National Pork Producers Council, said in a statement to MA. "We are eager to see the U.S. turn its full attention to resolving the ongoing 232 steel and aluminum tariff dispute with China, where U.S. pork exports continue to face a [25 percent] retaliatory duty."

Chris Swonger, CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council: "The end of this long tariff nightmare is in sight for U.S. distillers, who have struggled with the weight of the tariffs and the pandemic. It's time for the U.K. to lift its tariff on American Whiskeys so we can all get back to toasts, not tariffs."

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Row Crops

— The National Corn Growers Association, among other ag groups, filed an amicus brief on Friday in the U.S. Court of International Trade to overturn a decision by the International Trade Commission to place tariffs on phosphorus fertilizers from Morocco. "Farmers are feeling the pain from these tariffs," said NCGA President Chris Edgington in a statement. "We're facing severe cost hikes on our fertilizers, and we are worried about fertilizer shortages next year. We desperately need the U.S. Court of International Trade to remedy this situation."

— Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced a bill that would give top U.S. food and ag officials a permanent voice on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., as lawmakers look to crack down on foreign ownership of American farmland and agricultural firms.

— In other legislative news, Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a bill that would support the development of an offshore aquaculture industry in the U.S. by setting national standards for offshore fish operations in federal waters.

— Over 300 retired military leaders sent a letter to Congress calling for a modernization of child nutrition programs. They warned that high rates of child obesity represent a national security risk by disqualifying one in three young Americans from military service.

— Poultry contaminated with salmonella, including a specific strain of the virus that sickens thousands and is immune to many treatments, continues to be sold to customers, a ProPublica investigation finds.

— Louise Slade, a scientist who studied food molecules and is credited for findings that led to modern-day food storage, died at the age of 74. The New York Times has more.

— After two weeks of striking by John Deere workers, the company and United Auto Workers announced they have reached a tentative agreement. CNN reports.

THAT'S ALL FOR MA! Drop us a line: xbustillo@politico.com; hbottemiller@politico.com; meredithlee@politico.com; gmott@politico.com and pjoshi@politico.com.

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