The President of Global AgriTrends expects trade with China to remain the centre of focus for the U.S. throughout 2019. “Trump, Trade and Global Pork” was discussed last week as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2018.
Brett Stuart, the President Global AgriTrends, the real target in terms of trade appears to be China.
If you look at the Trump administration on paper and turn off the TV, they would probably be one of the more successful administrations of our time. The economy is doing great, unemployment’s low, the stock market is great, tax cuts are in place. It’s been good but with Trump there’s a lot of other discussions going on.
So the Trump trade agenda has focused out heavily on steel and aluminum and the Trump trade war was started with tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. That has swept through. It’s been involved in the Canada Mexico talks. Those two countries still don’t have an exemption.
We have that agreement somewhat in place. It still has to go to a vote on both sides of the border through Congress and Parliament. It will be some time before we really know what will happen with that agreement and with those steel duties.
But the real target at this time of the administration appears to be China. The big focus has been the massive trade imbalance with China. We’ve got two way duties now between the two countries. Those duties are set to ratchet up on January 1st.
There’s a high stakes meeting between President Xi and president Trump on the 29th of November in Argentina at the G-20. That’s really where the focus of the trade agenda is right now.
The Administration has announced that they’re going to engage talks with Japan, with Britain and with Europe. Those would all be seen as very positive with the farm sector but I think that’s probably a little further down the road into 2019.
~ Brett Stuart, Global AgriTrends
Stuart is confident many of these trade situations will be ironed out but he anticipates the situation with China will be prolonged.
