By MICHELE F. MIHALJEVICH

Indiana Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A relief package designed to help farmers hit by the continuing trade war with China could provide $15 billion-$20 billion in aid, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said last week.

He said the agency is still “in the throes of constructing” a plan, The Associated Press reported. Perdue told reporters May 15 he expects the new package to include some features of last year’s trade mitigation programs, which provided up to $12 billion for producers.

He didn’t say when details of the new plan might be released, AP reported.

President Donald Trump announced an increase in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods as of May 10. Three days later, China said it would raise tariffs to as much as 25 percent on $60 billion in U.S. products.

Included on China’s list are frozen spinach and legumes, fine and coarse rice, processed oats, corn and wheat flour, and smoked, dried, frozen, and salted beef. China’s tariff increase goes into effect June 1.

Trump also warned a 25 percent duty could be placed on an additional $300 billion in Chinese goods not currently facing tariffs. Industry and commodity groups spoke out recently on the latest round of tariffs and what they’d like to see in a new farmer relief plan.

“Agriculture has been the tip of the spear in the trade war,” noted Bob White, Indiana Farm Bureau’s director of national government relations. “Now, with the additional tariffs, consumers will start to feel the effects.

“With a 10 percent tariff, a lot of businesses can eat into their own profits. Those businesses are hoping the same thing as farmers – let’s get this done. When the tariffs are raised to 25 percent, those businesses will pass that along to consumers.”

China canceled orders for 3,247 metric tons of U.S. pork during the week ending May 9, the USDA said. The National Pork Producers Council welcomed the offer of aid from the Trump administration.

“We stand ready to work with the USDA to facilitate U.S. pork exports as food aid to a number of nations,” said David Herring, the organization’s president. “This assistance should not cannibalize commercial trade; rather, it should help people in need who otherwise would not have access to this high-quality U.S. protein.

“Pork producers have been innocent bystanders in these trade disputes. Unlike most of the population, they have suffered severe economic dislocations as a result of trade disputes. It is fair and right that the U.S. government purchase significant quantities of pork over the next 18 months to ship as food aid, to help ease the financial burden placed on producers.”

The National Corn Growers Assoc. (NCGA) said last year’s relief program paid producers a penny per bushel, adding growers would need more than that to provide market certainty. Trade disruptions caused an average price loss of 20 cents a bushel from May 2018-April 2019, it said.

In March and April 2019, the loss widened to nearly 40 cents a bushel.

The NCGA requested the administration take action to resolve the trade disputes “so that we can focus efforts on USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement) ratification, negotiations with Japan, and other new trading partners.” It also asked for an update in the relief package to factor market impacts into the calculation of program payment rates.

NCGA said the U.S. EPA should be directed to allow year-round E15 by June 1 “without attaching counterproductive RIN (renewable identification numbers) market changes that undermine biofuels blending, preventing disruption in E15 sales.”

If the 2019 relief package relies on production to determine direct payments, as the 2018 version did, weather could play a factor in some areas of the country, White noted.

“Planting could be down greatly in parts of the country. As for what this (plan) is going to look like, there are a lot of complications they’re going to have to deal with. This is true not only in the Midwest, but for almond growers in California and cherry growers in the Northwest.

“This affects a lot of different commodities in agriculture. The patience with China isn’t there for farmers like it was a year ago,” he said.

In a letter sent earlier this month to Trump, Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said last year’s aid package helped some farmers and ranchers hold on and gave trade negotiators time to reach a deal with China.

“Mitigation payments can never replace lost markets, but as long as these trade disruptions continue, we ask that your administration provide assistance so farmers and ranchers can continue to farm,” he wrote.

“America’s farmers and ranchers depend on growing and stable export markets. Our agricultural trade surplus previously has been a tremendous success story for the U.S. We hope to return to that success for agriculture and our country.”

Farmers are in need of financial assistance, said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. “We are more than a year into this trade war with China, and this most recent escalation suggests that there is no end in sight,” he explained. “At this point, we can’t expect export markets to go back to the way they were – the damage has already been done.

“In the long term, there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way we establish the economic sustainability of agricultural production in the U.S. But until that happens, struggling family farmers and ranchers are in desperate need of a lifeboat to keep them afloat, whether that’s another round of Marketing Facilitation Program payments or some other form of economic disaster assistance.”