Daines, Tester weigh in on ag tariffs

Both of Montana’s U.S. senators lamented the impact of escalating tariffs on Montana’s agricultural economy Thursday. But while Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., expressed confidence in the long-term impacts of President Donald Trump’s volatile trade negotiations with China, the EU, Canada and Mexico, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., warned that the tit-for-tat trade war threatens Montana farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to sell their products.

The senators’ public comments come on the heels of two developments this week in Trump’s hard-line trade disruptions. On Tuesday, the administration announced that it will provide $12 billion in aid to farmers who have experienced losses due to the tariffs. The following day, Trump and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced an agreement to defuse the trade war by refraining from further tariffs and ensuring the purchase of U.S. soybeans and liquefied natural gas in exchange for a hold on threats to the European auto industry.

Daines, speaking in a conference call with reporters Thursday morning, praised Trump’s meeting with Juncker as a “positive step forward.”

“What we’re seeing at the moment is the U.S. negotiating from a position of strength,” he said, adding that the world would be safer if European countries were not dependent on Middle Eastern oil or Russian natural gas.

Daines said that the concessions from the EU were “greater than we were anticipating.”

“The president has been very clear,” he said, “If you’re ready to go to free trade, we’re ready to have that discussion. The problem is that there’s a lot of unfair trade barriers” currently existing.

In the weeks leading up the meeting, Trump said unfair trade practices justified the tariffs that have disrupted world trade rhythms. The administration enacted billions of dollars of new taxes on European goods, a move that upset the perennially stable relationship between the U.S. and the EU and, in particular, with Germany, which exports millions of cars to the U.S. and also manufactures them in American factories.

Also this month, the administration levied $34 billion in tariffs against Chinese imports. China retaliated with its own $34 billion-worth of penalties on U.S. goods, particularly agricultural products such as soybeans and pork.

The measures portend trouble for farmers across the country and in Montana. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the ongoing trade war threatens $20 million worth of exports and 140,000 jobs for Montana.

Tester cited that number in a speech before the Senate on Thursday morning, in which he criticized the administration’s “self-inflicted” economic damage due to “tariffs and irresponsible policy.”

“We’ve been working generations and generations to develop markets all around the world ... and we’re losing those export markets. We’re losing certainty. And without certainty you cannot plan for the future.”

Montanans, he said, hope to pass family farms and ranches along to the next generation. “But if you create enough uncertainty that will simply be impossible and that’s exactly what’s going on in this country today.”

Tester also criticized the administration’s promise of $12 billion in aid to farmers as a “band-aid to stop the bleeding that’s being felt by American farmers and ranchers as a direct result of these trade policies.”

Rather, Tester advocated for protecting existing export markets for Montana farmers, who, he said, want a market for their products, not a handout.

“[The $12 billion] will provide temporary relief and, because of these trade policies, that temporary relief is important,” he said. “But it is far from a real solution for the folks who give us food security and the folks who feed the world: our family farms and ranches.”

Daines also praised the temporary relief measure for farmers, and offered a rosier outlook of the future and the administration’s attempts to renegotiate long-standing international trade agreements.

“The aid package is viewed as a short-term band-aid, not a long-term answer. The long-term answer is free and fair trade agreements.”

Regarding Montana agricultural producers, Daines said that “In the short term, at the moment, there is a concern. We’re seeing some increase in material prices ... I would not paint a rosy picture in the short term. What’s important is what will happen in the long term.”

Daines pointed to the “important win” of the agreement with the EU and Trump’s “excellent” discussions with Mexico as signs of a resolution to existing trade agreements that he characterized as “heavily weighted toward our trading partners at the expense of the United States.”

Reporter Adrian Horton can be reached at ahorton@dailyinterlake.com or at 758-4439.