Grassley Confident China Deal Will Hold; Says He Trusts Administration on Tariffs on EU Goods
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said some farmers he spoke to in his home state of Iowa told him they're concerned about trade with China. Grassley told such questioners he's not worried about the trade agreement.
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“I've still got confidence China is going to meet their responsibilities,” he relayed to reporters on a conference call June 2. Even though maintaining the increased exports promised as part of the phase one deal with China is important to Grassley, he did not criticize the president's announcement that Hong Kong would no longer be treated as a separate territory from China for the purposes of trade and immigration. “If we are a country that stands up for the rule of law, and that was violated, then of course we have to make sure our point is made very strongly, and I think the President made it very strongly,” he said.
Grassley said he has not been urging the U.S. trade representative to settle the Airbus-Boeing dispute, which led to higher taxes on imported food, clothing, liquor, wine and other goods from Europe, not just aircraft.
Grassley said it had been expected that the World Trade Organization would tell Europe in May what sort of tariffs it could levy to compensate for Boeing subsidies, and then the two sides would reach “a global agreement, so we don’t end up with these European airplane manufacturers vs. Boeing, and then the retaliation that both sides are going to put in place.”
Grassley said both European and American interests had been urging the U.S. government to reach a settlement on subsidies, and to do it sooner than has happened. But he said he has not been pushing USTR to negotiate, because the administration's position has been that it didn't want to until the size of retaliation granted by the WTO became clear.
Still, he said, “this thing’s been going on for 10 or 15 years, if our government feels like we have an opportunity to settle it once and for all, they ought to do it.”