"We
will be recalculating along as we go," Perdue said in a phone
interview with Reuters, regarding the second tranche of the
planned compensation, estimated at about $6 billion, which was
first announced in July after U.S. and China imposed trade
tariffs on each others imports.
China has traditionally been the biggest buyer of U.S.
agriculture exports but it has been largely out of the market
for several products, such as soybeans, since implementing
levies on U.S. imports in retaliation for the Trump
administration's tariffs on Chinese goods.
The aid package includes cash payments for farmers of soybeans,
sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton, dairy and hogs. The USDA had
already outlined the allocations for the first $6 billion at the
end of August.
Perdue said the picture has changed after the United
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was reached, a revamp of
the NAFTA trade agreement between the three nations.
"If the tariffs do come off and the tariff impact lessens it
will have some impact over the mitigation efforts because
mitigation efforts were based on the fact that they would be
tariff damage related," he said.
American farmers have yet to see the full benefit of the new
accord as an ongoing dispute over steel and aluminum tariffs
mean they still face retaliatory measures when trading with
Canada and Mexico. That agreement also does not address the harm
as a result of the trade war with China.
In late May, the Trump administration announced tariffs of 25
percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports,
prompting retaliation from top trading partners including Canada
and Mexico.
Perdue said talks to remove the steel and aluminum tariffs were
just beginning.
"The President feels tariffs have been very instrumental in
getting Canada to the negotiation table. Now that we have an
agreement, I believe their usefulness regarding those two
countries have diminished and I think we should go back to our
prior relationship of no tariffs on steel and aluminum," he
said.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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