Minnesota wheat and soybean farmer Tim Dufault summed up his reaction to the Trump administration’s trade war with China.
 
“We are now nearly two years into a trade war that we were told would be good and easy to win,” Dufault told the House Ways and Means Committee hearing Wednesday. “Time and again, we have been told to hold out for a deal that would make all the pain worth it. And while you would be hard pressed to find a farmer who would disagree with the fact that China has been a bad actor, farmers have shouldered the pain for a strategy that has seen only one minor tariff reduction and several tariff escalations.”
 
Dufault, who represented the group Farmers for Free Trade as well as himself, was among several speakers assessing the impact of the trade war and the first phase of a new trade agreement that calls for China to buy $80 billion more in U.S. agricultural products over two years.
 
“The purchases, which have not yet materialized, are a promise while the tariffs are real,” Dufault said, stressing the rising number of farm bankruptcies in Minnesota and several other states. “The ag economy doesn’t live on promises. Until China buys, we are not buying the promise.”
 
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