Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue acknowledged this week that farmers are getting hurt by President Donald Trump's trade war, but expressed optimism that a deal would be struck with China by the end of the year.
American farmers "are one of the casualties here with trade disruption," Perdue told CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich in an exclusive interview.
"We knew going in that when you flew the penalty flag on China, the retaliation, if it came, would be against the farmer," he added.
US soybean, corn, and wheat growers have been battling tariffs from China for nearly a year now. Beijing imposed those duties in retaliation to tariffs put on Chinese products by the Trump administration.
The tariffs made those American agricultural products more expensive for Chinese importers, and private buyers have mostly
stopped buying American-grown soybeans or wheat. Many farmers stood behind Trump's
mission to get a better trade deal with Beijing that addresses
longstanding issues with what they say are unfair trading practices. But some farmers started to grow impatient after
Trump escalated tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods last month,
signaling the two countries weren't as close to striking a deal as some
had expected. The news sent commodity prices plummeting...
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