Posted on 03/01/2018 3:43:22 PM PST by Ennis85
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) on Thursday blasted President Trump’s move to place new tariffs on foreign-made steel and aluminum as “terribly counterproductive” and warned of retaliation from trading partners.
Roberts has pressed Trump and senior administration officials in recent months to be careful in renegotiating trade arrangements so as not to invite retaliatory tariffs against U.S. agricultural exports.
“Every time you do this, you get a retaliation, and agriculture is the number one target. I think this is terribly counterproductive for the ag economy,” Roberts said.
Asked why Trump hasn’t appeared to heed the concerns of GOP senators from farm states, Roberts responded: “Good question.”
The president announced Thursday that he plans to put a 25 percent tariff on foreign-made steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum.
Soybean futures plunged earlier this year after Trump announced tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels after China, a major exporter of those goods, objected to the move.
China filed a World Trade Ogarnization protest against what it alleged was sorghum dumping in its markets. It also launched an investigation into sorghum exports from the United States.
“We’ve already done this on washing machines and solar panels and then the sourgum producers — one of the rare crops where we were making a profit — got targeted by China,” Roberts said.
Sorghum is a cereal crop that Chinese meat producers use as a cheap alternative to corn for feeding livestock.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Counter productive to what though? Congress critter’s personal bank accounts
stuffed with dough from selling us out?
Just one city in China makes 90% of the world’s electronics proof:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/inside-shenzhen-china-s-gadget-capital/
China destroyed the U.S. electronics industry and are now trying to destroy the U.S. steel and aluminum industries.
Go Trump!
A country needs an electronics industry in order to survive. Why would anyone that lives in the USA want China to continue the destruction of America?
Ask Pat Roberts where he lives in Kansas.
Oh wait, it’s just an EZ chair in someone’s house (boy do I remember THAT thread)
Stupid people and wee bairns shouldn’t see things half done as my granddad said.
This is the opening of negotiations.
And he campaigned on this topic.
Nothing is even on paper and signed.
Bunch of chicken little shitz.
Set aside Boeing exports, and we are basically just a consumer market for the global mercantile powers, in that we import value-added manufactured and engineered products and export raw materials and agricultural products.
Some of these farm state Republicans are the worst in that they support importing third world populations for the cheap labor and maintaining our status as a raw materials/crops colony for manufacturing powers like China, because the farm states grow the crops.
Maintaining our status as a consumer market and resource colony for China and other countries requires huge amounts of debt at both the government and consumer level to maintain the consumer spending power.
I don’t know about Pat Roberts personally but I’m pretty sure the rock I threw would hit more than a few RINO dogs. If past trade policies are so great why are we always sucking the tail winds of foreign countries?
This and other bright-paths think it’s a good idea to be dependent on steal supplied by a major global adversary.
Strategically, we need a steal industry here.
Pat Buchanan has advocated tariffs also.
Quick!
Beat the Bush family to it!
Smoot-Hawley! Smoot-Hawley! It’s all their fault!
Tell us Mr. Roberts....when China starts dictating policy to us (oh wait! they already do!), and does so by threatening to withold goods, what then?
No problem! We’ll just start up all our old industries!
Oh Wait...the technology will have disappeared since it went overseas and there was no development in our country; the investment will be too high to be competitive; the raw ore suppliers will have exclusive contracts with the foreign competition and there will be no workforce with any kind of skillsets to man such factories.
Oopsies. Gotta do what Chairman for Life Xi tells us to.
All China has to do to win a “war” with the U.S. is stop all exports to the U.S....
would that be steel or steal?
Turns out Pat Roberts has no home in Kansas and hasn’t had for years.
He uses someone else’s address - the “chair” he sleeps in when he visits, supposedly - is in this guy’s home.
And least that is what the thread brought out.
LOL
Hey, you’ll have to get used to it if you’re reading my posts.
Good call of course...
[Smoot-Hawley! Smoot-Hawley!]
I think the Laffer Curve just had one of the students drooling on his desk.
Wonder how much his Chinese masters paid him to say that?
He must be too poor to own a home in his home state. /s lol
... and meanwhile George W. Bush wants to bring in waves of cheap foreign labor to pick cotton.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/george-w-bush-on-dreamers-americas-their-home/article/2648500
Could our globalist elites be any more contemptuous of flyover American workers?
Hey!
LOL
I know huh...
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