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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Sunday, October 20, 2024
USDA officials are working under increasing pressure to devise programs to help compensate farmers for expected losses due to new Chinese tariffs, but the complexity of the task is daunting, say government officials.
In the latest salvo of trade actions between the U.S. and Chinese governments, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced plans today to impose a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion of U.S. goods, including soybeans, aircraft and automobiles, according to the Chinese News Agency, Xinhua.
China is starting its retaliation against U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs today, announcing it is imposing its own tariffs on a list of 128 U.S. products that are mostly farm commodities.
U.S. farmers will plant more soybeans than corn this year – for the first time since 1983 – but acreage for both crops will be smaller than in 2017, according to USDA’s Prospective Plantings report.
President Donald Trump today signed off on a plan to punish China for years of stealing intellectual property by imposing about $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods. The move came despite a growing chorus of warnings from Capitol Hill and farm groups that China will retaliate by taxing or blocking U.S. agricultural goods.
The USDA left its production estimates for this year’s corn and soybean crops unchanged from the February forecasts, while raising its projection for U.S. corn-ethanol output and slashing its outlook for Argentina’s soybean harvest.
By most measures, 2016 was another banner year for organic production. Sales of organic farm goods increased 23 percent to $7.6 billion, double the 2011 total. But most of the organic feed grains come from abroad.
The Trump administration this week finalizes hefty steel and aluminum tariffs that have farm groups bracing from retaliatory trade actions, and the president also is pushing forward to address complaints by refiners about the cost of complying with federal biofuel mandates.
President Donald Trump announced today that the U.S. will be hitting steel and aluminum imports from China and other countries with tariffs, elevating an already high level of concern that China will retaliate and U.S. ag exports will be caught in the crossfire.
The USDA is expecting strong support from farmers, elevators and exporters in an urgent mission to reduce the amount of unwanted material like weed seeds in the U.S. soybean supply.
