A trade deal with China could mean $40 billion for U.S. agriculture, well above the $16 billion in exports that went to China prior to the start of President Trump’s trade war with Beijing.

That’s according to Zippy Duvall, president of American Farm Bureau, who spoke Friday at Colorado Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in Denver.

On the other hand, approval of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the update to the North American Free Trade Agreement, is unlikely before the first of the year. Whether that agreement gets approved anytime soon is up to Congress, and as Duvall sees it, up to those in the agriculture community who he said need to put pressure on Congress to act, especially the House.

Friday, President Trump told “Fox and Friends” that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is refusing to bring the USMCA for a vote because of union pressure, specifically from the AFL-CIO, a claim denied by AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka.

A negotiating session between the Trump administration and House Democrats over the USMCA took place Thursday but without an agreement reached over environmental and labor issues.

Pelosi said Thursday that a vote on USMCA is increasingly unlikely before the end of 2019.

Duvall told reporters Friday that progress is being made on the USMCA, with the U.S. Trade Representative back and forth to Capitol Hill to work with Pelosi on the agreement. “I think they’ve done a lot of work” on the USMCA and that the votes are there to pass it.

More importantly, though, Duvall, said, is that the measure pass with strong bipartisan support in the House, which will send a sign to the world that Trump can negotiate with its neighbors and that Congress is behind the American farmer.

What’s needed right now, Duvall said, is pressure on Congress from the grassroots in agriculture and from constituents to get the agreement completed and passed. If that happens, he said, the speaker “won’t be able to overlook that pressure.”

Everything is riding on the House bringing the USMCA to a vote, Duvall said. Once passed in the House, he said the Senate will act quickly.

While better trade deals have been worked out for agriculture with Korea and Japan, the U.S. is “really close” on a phase one deal with China, Duvall said, based on conversations he’s had with Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, a fellow Georgian.

Should that deal come to fruition, there are big numbers possible, even in a phase one deal, Duvall explained. At the highest point before the trade war, China was importing $16 billion to $19 billion worth of American agricultural products. “The numbers we’re hearing are in excess of $40 billion,” more than the TransPacific Partnership was worth, he said.

That does bring with it some risk, to put so many “marbles in one basket,” but “we’d love to have the opportunity to be in that position,” he said.

In the meantime, Duvall, said, through the USDA’s market facilitation program (MFP), which is providing $16 billion in payments to farmers and ranchers hurt by the trade war with China, “this president has lived up to his commitment to support rural farmers and ranchers.”

The MFP “gives us an opportunity to survive until the next crop or the next calf,” and that applies to financial institutions that hold loans to farmers and ranchers. As long as they know the payments are coming, they can hold on until the next season, too, he said.

Agriculture faces far more challenges than just trade, however. Big issues include immigration and labor, given that much of American agriculture depends so much on undocumented labor. This isn’t a new problem, Duvall said, of new people coming across the border in the last three years. Many undocumented residents who work in ag have done so for decades, he said.

One solution, albeit temporary, is an increase in agricultural guest visas, known as H2A. The Department of Labor reported that the number of those visas had reached a record high of 242,000 in 2018. 

One issue is that among the tools being discussed for immigration is more stringent enforcement of E-verify. That was contained in the Immigration and Control and Reform Act of 1986, and requires employers to obtain documentation on the worker’s identity and work authorization.

However, questioning the authenticity of those documents isn’t allowed under the law and someone who questions those documents could be sued by the job applicant and the Department of Justice. The USDA even warns farmers that they must accept the documents presented by workers.

Discussions of immigration reform have included mandatory E-verify. But without a solid guest worker program in place, that’s not a solution for ag. “We need some kind of status for [undocumented workers]  to stay in the U.S. and work. An America that keeps them in the shadows is not the America I grew up in,” Duvall said.

A mandatory E-verify now would strip 60% of the workforce off the farm, he said. And a recent study from American Farm Bureau said that a mandatory E-verify program would cause agricultural production to drop by $60 billion and result in price increases of 5 to 6%.

Duvall would not weigh in on which is the better – the Pueblo chile or the Hatch chile – or whether Georgia’s peaches are better than those from Palisade. “Peaches are wonderful!” he said, laughing.