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OK, I’ll amend that:

We don’t have a bi-lateral “Free Trade Agreement” as we do with, say, Canada with China or Japan, that has the words “Free Trade Agreement” in the title. Mea culpa for not differentiating between the legal term and the trade fetish that is so popular, ie, the libertarian nonsense of “free trade.”

We do have a “free trade policy” (as the WTO bureaucrats liked to tell us farmers) with both countries in that they’re both accorded MFN status and we have lowered our trade barriers to them as part of the multi-lateral WTO agreements.

When one is actually in the business of exporting, the US bureaucrats like to tell producers “We have an agreement, and we have to abide by it!” and such poppyrot.

What they never explain is why the Japanese are allowed to turn back ag products on a whim, while we have to accept melamine from China, and all concerned are part of the same global “free trade” agreement.

There’s nothing that gets farmers madder than this “free trade” nonsense on the issue of food safety. We get the black eye and the price competition at the same time we end up with countries turning back our products on the slightest whim (eg, the EU and their ban on GMO foodstuffs for years...)

OK, I’ll amend that:
We don’t have a bi-lateral “Free Trade Agreement” as we do with, say, Canada with China or Japan,

Excellent.

Mea culpa for not differentiating between the legal term and the trade fetish

Yeah, sorry for giving you a hard time for being so totally wrong.

We do have a “free trade policy”

Government rules mean we don't have free trade.

while we have to accept melamine from China

We have an agreement that says that? Could you cut and paste that section? Or will you be amending that statement too?

Farmers are an interesting lot: the conservative ones I've known (only a couple, never met a lib farmer) still prefer to sell their product on the open market, to anybody, rather than to the federal government (or do whatever, you know what I mean).

When I'd ask them if the subsidies (again, or whatever) they collect were really necessary, the universal response was always a shrug and a comment along the lines of, "the other guy (farmer) gets his, I'm just shooting myself in the foot if I don't." I wouldn't really press the issue, because these were neighbors and acquaintances.

I just don't see how it is sound public policy to set up a program (that costs money to administer, obviously) that makes the users participate "because they get hurt if they don't." It seems to me that it would be far better for the government to allow these farmers find as many outlets for their products as possible. So you have (pick one) the protectionist Japanese making it hard for American farmers to sell their goods . . . it doesn't make any sense to shut those farmers out of Panama for it.