US President Donald Trump on Friday said that he has asked China to immediately remove all tariffs on US agricultural products, including beef and pork, citing progress in trade talks between the two nations.
In making the demand, Trump said in a tweet that he refrained from increasing US tariffs on Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent on Friday, as he said he would in the absence of progress toward an agreement.
China last year imposed retaliatory tariffs on US agricultural products, although Trump did not indicate that his demand was limited to those penalties.
Soybeans, as well as beef, pork and chicken products were on the first batch of retaliatory tariffs on US$34 billion worth of imports imposed in July, and were subject to an extra 25 percent duty.
It is unclear what effect Trump’s demand could have on ongoing talks, which the US president signaled earlier this week were moving toward an agreement.
US officials are preparing a final trade deal that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) could sign within weeks, people familiar with the matter have said, even as a debate continues in Washington over whether to push Beijing for more concessions.
Trump, speaking to reporters in Hanoi on Thursday after a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said: “Speaking of China, we’re very well on our way to doing something special. But we’ll see.”
“I am always prepared to walk,” he said. “I’m never afraid to walk from a deal, and I would do that with China, too, if it didn’t work out.”
If China were to remove the tariffs, it would likely be a huge boon to US crop markets that have been caught in the trade spat crossfire. Soybean, pork and ethanol shipments have languished amid the duties.
China is a key destination for most of the world’s biggest agriculture markets.
US farmers and lawmakers have long decried the tariffs, and the US agriculture economy has suffered under the weight of falling crop prices.
China has already made some good-faith purchases of US soybeans after declaring a trade truce with the US in December last year.
Last week, US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said more soybean purchases were coming.
Ending the tariffs would dovetail with a proposal by Beijing to buy an additional US$30 billion a year of US agricultural products, including corn, soybeans and wheat, as part of a possible agreement.
“The markets are a little tired of some of the ups and downs and the eight or 12-hour news cycle of tweets,” said Greg Grow, the director of agribusiness at Archer Financial Services in Chicago. “The market needs to see some confirmation of a deal getting done. If this is a confirmation, and we start to see agreements that are signed, we’ll see a positive reaction for prices. But we need to see confirmation of the news,” Grow said by telephone on Friday.
The preparations for a Trump-Xi summit comes amid conflicting signals from the Trump administration over the prospect of a deal.
US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin on Thursday said that the two nations are working on a 150-page document that would turn into a “very detailed agreement,” but added that “we still have more work to do.”
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