Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue expressed his disappointed last week in the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, but said he is optimistic about progress being made in the next round that takes place Oct. 11-15 in Washington, D.C. “We’re eager to enter into bilateral trade negotiations with Japan and lower those barriers to address the preferences that they seem to have currently for Australia, the EU, Chile, Mexico and other countries,” he said. “We think our geopolitical relationship with Japan should lead to a preferred status in (trade) as well.” Read more…