Leadership Quote by Mike Johanns

The line is pure technocratic triumph, the kind of victory lap Washington loves because it sounds like geopolitics while staying safely inside the language of commerce. “We had” does the heavy lifting: it frames market access not as a negotiated exchange, but as an American achievement delivered to passive counterparts. That phrasing signals leverage and competence without ever naming the pressure, the bargaining chips, or the inevitable trade-offs.

Johanns, speaking as a U.S. agriculture official, is working a familiar domestic brief: reassure ranchers, show results, and convert foreign policy into something measurable - shipments, approvals, “open” markets. The roll call of Taiwan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Oman isn’t random, either. It’s a curated map of U.S. influence: a democratic partner in East Asia, strategic states in the Middle East, places where trade policy doubles as diplomatic cement. Listing them like trophies turns complex relationships into an export scoreboard.

The subtext, especially for anyone watching agricultural politics in the 2000s, is about legitimacy after controversy. U.S. beef access has often been tangled with food-safety fears, disease outbreaks, and regulatory fights. “We’re excited about that” is intentionally bland, a friendly gloss that sidesteps the arguments about standards, inspection regimes, and whether “opening markets” benefits small producers or mostly consolidates power among big exporters.

It works because it compresses a messy story into a clean one: America produces, others buy, everyone wins. The sentence isn’t trying to persuade skeptics abroad; it’s trying to certify success at home.