United States Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that trade deals are imminent between the Trump administration and foreign governments.
“We have 100 countries that are knocking on the door, I believe. I’m not in the room, I’m not negotiating the trade deals, but my understanding is we should have several this week that are coming forward, that are very, very close,” she told CNN.
“China is a very important one. Every day we are in conversation with China along with those other 99, 100 countries that have come to the table.”
“In agriculture, year upon year, decade upon decade, our goods have been taken advantage of,” she said.
“The trade disparity: the non-trade barriers on top of the tariff numbers are insane, whether it’s Argentina or China or Brazil or the U.K. I could just go country by country with you and talk about how they treat our beef, what they do with our pork.”
In the past these issues were addressed within the World Trade Organization, but because things there have not satisfied the United States, it has become silent there. It has also failed to name people to panels that deal with disputes, so the World Trade Organization has lacked teeth to enforce agreed-upon terms of trade.
Trump appears to be successful in using tariffs to bully countries into accepting U.S. terms.
