Trump delivering $16 billion more in aid to farmers.
Payments are effort to relieve economic pain of trade policy
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is delivering $16 billion more in aid to farmers hurt by his trade policies, an effort to relieve the economic pain among his supporters in rural America.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that the first of three payments is likely to be made in July or August and suggested that the U.S. and China were unlikely to have settled their differences by then.
“The package we’re announcing today ensures that farmers do not bear the brunt of unfair retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other trading partners,” Perdue said.
The latest bailout comes atop $11 billion in aid Trump provided farmers last year.
“We will ensure our farmers get the relief they need and very, very quickly,” Trump said.
Trump, seeking to reduce America’s trade deficit with the rest of the world and with China in particular, has imposed import taxes on foreign steel, aluminum, solar panels and dishwashers and on thousands of Chinese products.
U.S trading partners have lashed back with retaliatory tariffs of their own, focusing on U.S. agricultural products in a direct shot at the American heartland, where support for Trump runs high.
William Reinsch, a trade analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former U.S. trade official, called the administration’s aid package for farmers “a fairly overt political ploy.”
“It’s not economics,” Reinsch said. Trump wants to win the farm states again in the 2020 election, “and he’s got members of Congress beating up on him” to resolve the trade conflicts.
Financial markets buckled Thursday on heightened tensions between the U.S. and China. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 286 points, or 1%, to 25,490. It had been down 448 points earlier in the day.
U.S. crude plunged 6% on fears that the trade standoff could knock the global economy out of kilter and kill demand for energy.
Talks between t he world’s two biggest economies broke off earlier this month with no resolution to a dispute over Beijing’s aggressive efforts to challenge American technological dominance.
The U.S. charges that China is stealing technology, unfairly subsidizing its own companies and forcing U.S. companies to hand over trade secrets if they want access to the Chinese market.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss the standoff at a meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in Osaka, Japan, next month.
But briefing reporters on the farm aid package, Perdue said he doubted that “a trade deal could be consummated before” the first payments to farmers in July or August.
In Beijing, China held the door open to resuming talks in the tariff war with Washington on Thursday but lashed out at limits on access to key technologies that it said might hurt global supply chains.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China hopes to restart the talks that broke down earlier this month after the U.S. hiked tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports, but only if the conditions are deemed fair.
Seeking to rally support for its side in the tariff war, Beijing is vehemently protesting the Trump administration’s decision last week to impose controls on exports of computer chips and other key components. The move, mainly aimed at telecom equipment maker Huawei and other Chinese high-tech companies, will hinder global cooperation in science and technology and has “harmed the vital interests of relevant enterprises and countries,” Lu said.
The Trump administration has singled out Huawei, accusing it of posing a security threat. As a result, U.S. allies and their companies increasingly have put cooperation with the company on hold.