Trump-China Truce: US Farmers ‘Not Going to Be Beneficiaries’

On Saturday, during the G20 summit, US President Donald Trump agreed to halt plans of raising tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10 percent to 25 percent starting from January 1, 2019, in order to pave the way for trade talks with Beijing.
Sputnik

However, Trump also warned that if the trade talks do not succeed within the next 90 days, the tariffs will be raised to 25 percent as planned. Meanwhile, the Xinhua news agency also claimed that the two countries agreed to expedite talks toward eliminating all additional tariffs, citing the Chinese Foreign Ministry. 

​"They're [farmers] not going to be beneficiaries," Ross told Radio Sputnik.

"They're merely going to be saved from a big mess. Because the soybean prices in the US have fallen extremely severely because of the tariffs which Trump imposed, which China responded to. Farmers have taken a big negative hit due to Trump's tariff policies, and now he's trying to get them something out of this mess," Ross added. 

US, China Unlikely to Resolve Key Differences on Trade Within 90 Days - Scholars

US soybean exports to China have decreased by 98 percent this year, according to Yahoo Finance, as China has started importing the crop from Brazil amid the trade war. Soybeans were the US' top agricultural export to China last year.

"Although China wants to be self-sufficient, it doesn't believe that it can expand its soybean production to meet its needs, and therefore its the world's largest importer of soybeans," Ross noted.

"It was a very win-win relationship, and Trump messed it up," Ross told Radio Sputnik, referring to the fact that China was purchasing large amounts of soybeans from the US before the trade war began.

"The American farmers were doing very well, and he [Trump] created a big problem for them. My guess is he wants to get out of this mess because the midterm elections went very badly for him," he said.

Discuss