House Ag Chair Backs Biden on Killing Trump Tariffs

by Philip Brasher (Agri-Pulse) House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson supports Joe Biden’s plan to eliminate President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China but said he isn’t sure what the alternative is for countering Chinese trade practices.

“First thing I want to see is to stop these tariffs. I think it’s been a counterproductive situation,” Peterson said Friday during an online Biden campaign roundtable on agriculture.

Peterson blamed U.S. trade problems with China on the 2000 vote in Congress that cleared the way for China to join the World Trade Organization. The 2000 measure formally normalized trade relations with the Chinese.

Peterson noted that he voted against the China bill. “It is not a surprise they’re behaving the way they are” as a result, he said. But he didn’t mention that Biden voted for it, a position speakers attacked during this week’s Republican National Convention.

Rep. Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat who chairs the House Ag Committee’s subcommittee on general farm commodities and risk management, said Trump’s trade wars have been “devastating to farmers across the board.”

He said Biden would be “thoughtful and measured” in dealing with the trade issue. Trump’s approach, by contrast, was “punitive and it was abrupt, and it really just threw everything upside down.”

Rick Telesz, a dairy and grain farmer from Pennsylvania, noted that Trump said nothing in his 70-minute acceptance speech Thursday night about his second-term agenda for farm policy.

“After this election, if he wins, he won’t have a use for the American farm vote. We’ll be forgotten,” Telesz said.

Telesz as well as Peterson also criticized the Trump administration for giving refiners waivers from annual biofuel mandates.

“I don’t trust this administration one inch” when it comes to administering the Renewable Fuel Standard, said Peterson.

He praised Biden and running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, “for standing up and saying that if they're elected they are not going to be giving out these waivers right and left like this administration did. And then we’re going to have 15 billion gallons of ethanol (consumed annually). That’s what we were promised (under the RFS) and what we need. If we did that we would have a much better price situation all across agriculture.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Fern's Ag Insider: Trump is highly popular with farmers, who tend to be socially and fiscally conservative. In a straw poll by Farm Journal on Aug. 14, 82 percent of respondents backed Trump, roughly the same as previous tests. A survey of producers by DTN/Progressive Farmer in early August found 71 percent support for Trump, down 18 points from April, but a landslide margin. Neighbors will say they have experienced “the toughest two, three years they can remember,” said Pennsylvania farmer Rick Telesz, on the Democratic roundtable. “And the next sentence, they’re saying, ‘I’m voting for Trump.'”

It may be an enormous challenge to win the rural vote, but Democratic nominee Joe Biden would benefit if Democrats reduce the Republican margin. In 2016, for example, Trump narrowly won three key states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that have sizable rural populations.

“There was no plan going into those trade wars and in the end, did we really get great deals?” asked a skeptical Darin Von Rudin, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. “One of my greatest frustrations of the last six months really has been our president’s leadership and the whole Covid-19 crisis. You know there has not been anything there at the national level.”

U.S. farm exports slumped as a result of tit-for-tat tariffs with China and trade-war payments from the administration did not fully offset the damage, said the panelists. “Trying to use trade as a negotiation tool is very difficult because it really affects our bottom line,” said Texas rancher Kim Ratcliffe. Ohio farmer Tenah McMahan said there had “definitely been an impact” on corn prices because of the administration’s dallying over Renewable Fuel Standard.

Trump approved year-round sale of E15, a higher blend of ethanol into gasoline than the standard 10 percent, but the EPA has granted dozens of exemptions from compliance to small refiners during Trump’s term, to the dismay of farm and ethanol groups. The EPA has not said if it will implement an appellate court ruling that would mostly rule out such waivers in the future. During a visit to Iowa on Aug. 18, Trump said, “I’ll speak to them myself,” when Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican running for re-election, raised the issue. Republican lawmakers have periodically asked Trump to intervene with the EPA on ethanol. READ MORE