Trade Talk: A conversation with ag trade experts

Join us for a timely conversation on North American agricultural trade policy featuring veterans in the agricultural trade space. Our newsmaker event scheduled for Wednesday, November 3, will allow NAAJ members to hear directly from individuals who have played an integral role in developing the current trade framework. See full bios below. For the passcode of the event recording, email naajnews@yahoo.com.

12-12:20 p.m. Gregg Doud, former U.S. chief ag trade negotiator under the Trump administration 
12:20-12:40 p.m. Ted McKinney, CEO for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture
12:40-1 p.m. Mike Gifford, former chief agricultural trade negotiator for Canada
1-1:30 p.m. Open questions from reporters

Gregg Doud
Aimpoint Research vice president of global situational awareness & chief economist
Former U.S. chief agricultural negotiator

Prior to joining Aimpoint Research, Gregg served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as chief agricultural negotiator with the rank of U.S. ambassador. He was one of the primary architects of the U.S.-China "Phase One" trade agreement.

Gregg has previously served as president of the Commodity Markets Council, the leading trade association for commodity futures exchanges and their industry counterparts, where he worked to lead the industry in addressing global market and risk management issues. As a senior staff member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Doud helped craft the 2012 Senate Farm Bill working on international trade, food aid, livestock, and oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Doud served as dhief economist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association for eight years and is a former market analyst for the U.S. Wheat Associates.

Raised on a dry-land wheat, grain sorghum, soybean, swine, and cow-calf operation near Mankato in North-Central Kansas, Doud continues to be involved in his family’s 100-year-old farm and is a partner in a commercial cow-calf operation. He received a B.S. in Agriculture with an emphasis in animal science, as well as a M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Kansas State University. He currently resides with his family on their horse farm in Lothian, Maryland.

Ted McKinney

CEO, National Association of State Departments of Agriculture

Former USDA trade undersecretary

Ted serves as the chief executive officer of NASDA, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, a position to which he was named in September 2021. Prior to NASDA, he was also the first U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs from 2017-2021. In that role, Under Secretary McKinney led the development and implementation of the Department’s trade policy, oversaw and facilitated foreign market access, and promoted opportunities for U.S. agriculture through various trade programs and high-level government negotiations. He also oversaw the U.S. Codex Alimentarius staff and functions.

After his USDA service, McKinney was engaged in foreign affairs and outreach involving the US food and agriculture industry and its engagement with the United Nations Food Systems Summits.

In 2014, McKinney was appointed by then-Governor Mike Pence to serve as Director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, a position he held until joining USDA in 2017. His career also included 19 years with Dow AgroSciences, where over time he served in nearly all government & public affairs roles, and 14 years with Elanco, at that time a subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company, where he was director of global corporate affairs. His industry and civic involvement is vast, including service as founder and co-chair of the National FFA Convention Local Organizing Committee, membership on the Indiana State Fair Commission, and Purdue College of Agriculture Dean’s Advisory Council, as well as on the boards of directors of the International Food Information Council and the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

McKinney grew up on a family grain and livestock farm in Tipton, Indiana, and was a 10-year 4-H member and an Indiana State FFA officer. He graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. degree in Agricultural Economics in 1981, at which time he received the G.A. Ross Award as the outstanding University senior male graduate. In 2002, he was named a Purdue Agriculture Distinguished Alumnus and, in 2004, received an FFA Honorary American degree. He and his wife, Julie, have three children and six grandchildren, and reside in Alexandria, Virginia.

Mike Gifford

Canadian agricultural trade policy adviser

Former Canada chief agricultural trade negotiator

For thirty-five years Mike Gifford was directly involved in all aspects of Canada’s bilateral, regional and multilateral agricultural trade policy. For the last fifteen he served as Canada’s chief agricultural trade negotiator and principal agricultural trade policy advisor to both the ministers of agriculture and trade.

In his public service career, he was involved in virtually every major trade negotiation, beginning with the renegotiation of the Canada/New Zealand and Canada/Australia trade agreements and the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations. He also served as the chairman of the GATT International Meat Council and acted as the chief Canadian agricultural negotiator in the Canada/US Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations

Since retiring from the Canadian public service in late 2000, he has acted as an agricultural trade policy adviser to the Canadian public and private sectors and has undertaken agricultural trade policy capacity building projects in China, Egypt, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Mike Gifford has also acted as a consultant to the WTO and served as a member of a WTO dispute settlement panel. He was a member of the International Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC) and has been an acknowledged as an internationally recognized speaker on agricultural trade policy issues at home and abroad.

He received his B.Sc.(Agr.) in agricultural economics at Macdonald College, McGill University and his  M.A. in agricultural economics at the University of Chicago.