Wednesday, December 7th 2016
It’s being widely reported today that Iowa Governor Terry Branstad has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to be the next U.S. ambassador to China. In a speech this morning at the Iowa Farm Bureau annual meeting in Des Moines, U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack—himself a former governor of Iowa—said Branstad’s appointment is good news for American agriculture. “He’s tenacious—and trust me, with the Chinese, you’ve got to be tenacious,” Vilsack said. “We still have work to do on biotechnology. We still have work to do in reopening a beef market that’s been closed for too long.” Iowa Farm Bureau president Craig Hill agrees that it is positive news. “Our governor has been the biggest advocate of trade and opportunities in agriculture,” Hill says. “He’s a farmer himself—I mean, that’s where he grew up, in a rural part of the state, it’s in his bones—and we think it would be a great conduit for him to work with China.” It’s speculated that Trump will officially announce Branstad’s appointment today when Trump visits Iowa.