Kennedy Rice Mill CEO Shares U.S. Rice Industry Concerns On CNN
USA Rice
WASHINGTON, DC – On Tuesday, Kennedy Rice Mill CEO Meryl Kennedy was invited on CNN to talk about the impact of President Trump's tariffs and how they are affecting the U.S. rice industry.
Kennedy’s appearance on “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” a program with a viewership of nearly 800K, was the result of her meeting with Trump in the White House on Monday, where she and other producers, including Charles Williams III, an Arkansas rice farmer, were on hand for the announcement of the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program which will provide $11 billion in support for U.S. row-crop farmers, including rice.
"Tariffs are something the rice industry has wanted even before Trump, because we were seeing tariffs from other countries," Kennedy said during the interview with Tapper. "For instance, India has a 70-80 percent tariff on the U.S. right now...Thailand [has] a 50 percent tariff. We have no access to those countries, and yet they ship rice into our countries, so we're asking for fair trade, not free trade."
Rice farmers, particularly those from southern U.S. growing regions, are experiencing real hardship, intensified by years of heavily subsidized imports entering the U.S. market. And while recent trade actions have helped, the unprecedented volume of heavily subsidized rice entering the global market is having a disastrous impact on the domestic industry.
As Kennedy explained: "It's more about the Indian government subsidizing their farmers so much so that the farmers overproduce and then dump this rice in the rest of the world making this a global issue, not just a U.S. issue."