President Trump’s trade team recently concluded two-days of talks in Beijing, making some headway in an ongoing bilateral trade battle and raising hopes in agriculture that the tariff fight can soon end.  American Farm Bureau trade adviser Dave Salmonsen is taking a positive view of the talks, hoping they can head off further damage to U.S. farm exports in an escalating trade spat.  He said he’s glad the two sides are chatting.

 

“Pleased that the very high level delegation from the U.S. Government went over the Beijing and started a process of trying to talk about what are the underlying issues behind this whole thing dealing with intellectual property, technology transfer, U.S. companies and how they do business in China and the obstacles that they are facing, so I hope they can get down to these issues and have a good discussion. And come to some agreements.”

 

Agreements that would end Chinese tariffs against U.S. pork, sorghum, fruit, ethanol, and more.  Salmonsen said there’s still time to end the fight before further U.S. tariffs could be triggered later in the year, after a hearing and review process.

 

 

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