Trump promised farmers 'smarter' trade deals. Now he has to bail them out.
By Catherine Rampell
Columnist
September 3 at 6:56 PM
“Trade, not aid.” That’s what farmers, ranchers and their elected officials keep telling the Trump administration they want. They have worked hard over the years to grow their export opportunities, forging critical relationships in China, Mexico, the European Union, Canada and other markets. Customers around the world have gobbled up U.S.-produced pork, soybeans, fruits and other goods.
Yet in a matter of months, President Trump has managed to fray — and possibly sever — many of those ties.
For bogus “national security” reasons, among other rationales, he has provoked nearly every one of our major trading partners into slapping retaliatory tariffs on tens of billions of dollars’ worth of American-made agricultural products.
More than a third of U.S. orange juice and apple exports are caught up in tariff actions, according to researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The same is true for half of U.S. foreign sales of whiskey and two-thirds of soybeans. And a whopping 89 percent of U.S. sorghum exports have been hit with tariffs thanks to Trump’s trade war.
Further, the strengthening dollar — also due in part to administration policies — is making U.S. goods more expensive, too.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-promised-farmers-smarter-trade-deals-now-he-has-to-bail-them-out/2018/09/03/fff3d28c-afae-11e8-9a6a-565d92a3585d_story.html
