U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will be the only witness to give testimony during a hearing this week before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee.
Lighthizer is one of the key Trump administration members at the center of the president’s trade strategy that’s led to retaliatory tariffs from China, Mexico, Canada, the European Union, and others. Many of those tariffs are hitting the farm sector extremely hard and provoking ag groups and farm-state lawmakers to become much more vocal in their opposition to Trump’s tariffs.
The opposition is growing after Trump repeated a threat to add even more tariffs to Chinese goods. He told CNBC that he’s “ready to go to $500 billion.” The U.S. originally hit China with $34 billion in tariffs back in July, but then added another $200 billion to that after China matched the first $34 billion.
The escalation was combined with White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro’s complete disregard for the damage the tariffs are doing to the ag economy, drawing sharp responses from ag leaders. Navarro told CNBC that the trade losses due to Chinese tariffs amounted to a “rounding error.”
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.