Biden’s help sought by Collins, Senate colleagues to open Japan market to U.S. potatoes

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and nine of her colleagues urged President Joe Biden to press Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to open Japanese markets to U.S. fresh potatoes.

The senators in an April 11 bipartisan letter sent to Biden wrote that Kishida’s recent visit to the United States posed an opportunity to address this long-standing issue and to make progress in allowing U.S. grown fresh potatoes to be exported to Japan.

“U.S. producers continue to face significant obstacles in gaining access to the market in Japan,” wrote Sen. Collins and her colleagues, who included U.S. Sens. John Hoeven (R-ND) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

Despite federal efforts in America, they wrote, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Farming and Fisheries (MAFF) continues to delay substantive technical discussions on table stock access, and during the most recent bilateral meetings in September 2023, MAFF again refused to provide the U.S. with a pest risk assessment or any timetable for delivering one. 

“Instead, their officials indicated that they would review individual pests over the next year,” the senators wrote. “This marks the fifth year of discussions without any forward progress by MAFF to resolve this decades-long issue.”

Sen. Collins and the lawmakers added that there’s “no valid phytosanitary justification” for such delays because the U.S. potato industry has a strong history of exporting fresh potatoes to numerous markets, including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand. 

“These exports occur safely and routinely throughout the year, providing benefits both for consumers in the IndoPacific and our growers here in the United States,” they wrote. “Technical discussions have not made meaningful progress and now is the time to find a solution for U.S. potato growers.”