The Food Industry Is Pressuring Biden To Dump Trump’s Awful Tariffs

Last week, dozens of food industry groups, many of which represent key cogs in the domestic and international food industry, released an “urgent call” to President Joe Biden and European Union (E.U.) Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen to work together to repeal retaliatory trade tariffs that have helped raise food prices and harmed consumers and food producers alike. 

The groups, based in the U.S. and Europe, urged von der Leyen and Biden to immediately suspend the tariffs because of the economic damage they cause and “to help re-establish a cooperative Trans-Atlantic trading relationship.”

The joint call to lift the tariffs and renew that relationship is a subtweet-style reference to former President Donald Trump, whose antagonistic nature, nationalist bent, and love of tariffs (he dubbed himself “tariff man“) drew a wedge between traditional trading partners America and Europe. 

The food tariffs in question arose after the World Trade Organization determined both that the U.S. had provided illegal subsidies to Boeing, the U.S.-based airplane manufacturer, and that the E.U. had provided similar illegal subsidies to Airbus, the E.U.-based airplane manufacturer that is Boeing’s chief competitor. As the (mostly) food-industry parties rightly note in their letter to Biden and von der Leyen, punishing the food industry and the hundreds of millions of consumers who rely on these businesses in the U.S. and E.U. is not only foolhardy, it’s “wholly unrelated” to the dispute over airplane subsidies.

The 72 signatories, made up of representatives from U.S.- and EU-based interests, include fruit and juice makers, bakers, wine and spirits makers, wheat growers, fisheries groups, frozen food makers, and groups representing farmers who grow, pack, and shi