President Trump said on Monday that his administration was
planning to provide about $15 billion in aid to help U.S. farmers whose
products may be targeted with tariffs by China amid a deepening trade war.
He did not provide any more details on what kind of an aid
package it would be, Reuters reports.
American farmers, a key constituency of Trump, have been
among the hardest hit in the trade war. Soybeans are the most valuable U.S.
farm export, and shipments to China dropped to a 16-year low in 2018, while
soybean futures prices last week fell this week to 11-year lows.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said on Friday that
Trump had asked him to create a plan to help American farmers cope with the
heavy impact of the U.S.-China trade war on agriculture.
A new aid program would be the second round of assistance
for farmers, after the Department of Agriculture's $12 billion plan last year
to compensate for lower prices for farm goods and lost sales stemming from
trade disputes with China and other nations.
"Out of the billions of dollars that we're taking (in
in tariffs on Chinese imports), a small portion of that will be going to our
farmers, because China will be retaliating, probably to a certain extent,
against our farmers," Trump said.
On Monday, China said it would impose higher tariffs on a
range of U.S. goods, including frozen vegetables and liquefied natural gas,
striking back in its trade war with Washington after Trump warned it not to.
Last year Beijing imposed tariffs on imports of U.S.
agricultural goods, including soybeans, grain sorghum and pork as retribution
for U.S. levies. Soybean exports to China have plummeted over 90 percent and
sales of U.S. soybeans elsewhere failed to make up for the loss.