“American farmers exported more than 26 million metric tons of soybeans to China annually during Biden’s term. Trump’s deal with China would cover less than half that amount
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Since 2017, America has exported more than 22 million metric tons of soybeans to China in every year except two. Those years? The first was 2018, when China cut off purchases of American soybeans in response to Trump’s tariffs targeting American imports of Chinese goods. The second was this year, when China did the same thing in response to another set of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.”
“The Trump administration unveiled a $12 billion aid package on Monday for farmers hurt by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other economic challenges.”
“Nvidia, which makes up 92 percent of the global GPU market, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has the remaining 8 percent, have reached a deal with the Trump administration. They’ll get export licenses for the sale of certain chips to China in exchange for 15 percent of the revenues generated by the sales, reports the Financial Times.
“No US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licences,” the paper notes.
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The new agreement is not only unusual—it could be illegal, too. The Constitution states in no uncertain terms, “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” Yet this is what the Trump administration is effectively doing by conditioning permission to export these products on the forfeiture of 15 percent of sales revenue. Padilla appears to agree, telling the Post that “this arrangement seems like bribery or blackmail, or both.
Even if the deal brokered between the chipmakers and the federal government were legal, it would still be uneconomical. The revenue—hundreds of millions of dollars—will be directed to a Treasury Department slush fund that will allocate it arbitrarily. Nvidia and AMD have a stronger incentive, more information, and a better track record with investing dollars in a manner that yields a high return on investment.
U.S. export controls have not stopped China from developing AI, but they have denied American GPU firms access to much-needed revenue. Imposing this constitutionally dubious 15 percent tax is yet another example of unnecessary interference with the private sector.”
“The United States has generated $46.6 billion this year from tariffs as of May 8, the latest data available — 46.3% more than the same time last year. Federal income taxes, meanwhile, brought in $2.4 trillion in 2024.
And the $14.7 billion difference in tariff revenue year-on-year is just part of the story. High levies can cause huge surges in revenue that later level off as trade patterns shift and businesses seek to lower costs along their supply chains.”
Despite producing tons of oil, the U.S. still imports a lot of oil. The stuff we produce can’t be refined by our refineries, so we ship it out to be refined and import foreign oil to refine here.
“In peacetime, Ukraine’s food exports were enough to feed 400 million people. Its farmers supplied a tenth of the wheat and half the sunflower oil sold on world markets. Its shipments of grains and oilseeds through the Black Sea fell to zero last March, from 5.7 million metric tons in February.
For net importers the impact was immediate and direct. Egypt and Libya had imported two-thirds of their cereals from Russia and Ukraine, for instance. Other countries were hit by the fallout: Prices shot up, first in response to the invasion, and again as countries like India imposed bans on grain exports.
“One of the cruelest ways in which Putin has used the weapons of war to impose costs on people around the world is the ways in which his early blockade of Black Sea ports raised prices for hungry people in dozens of countries around the world,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close ally of President Joe Biden and who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview.
Coons noted the U.N., Turkey and Ukraine’s work to forge the Black Sea grain deal has reduced some of the overwhelming strain on global food prices, “but not enough yet.”
In Ukraine, farmers could not sell their crops after a bumper harvest before the war left grain stores brimming. The next harvest, already in the ground, had nowhere to go, said Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The standstill to exports also endangered the home front. Before the war, almost half of the country’s budget stemmed from exports, and nearly half of those exports were agricultural, according to Dmytro Los of the Ukrainian Business and Trade Association. “So don’t forget that, during the war, we lost almost 45-50 percent of GDP,” Los said.
To stave off starvation abroad and rescue Ukrainian farmers, the EU set up overland “solidarity lanes” to help bring food exports out through Eastern Europe. And, in July, the U.N. and Turkey mediated the deal to allow safe passage for Ukrainian food shipments through the Black Sea.
Some 21.5 million tons of Ukrainian produce have been transported under the initiative, enabling the World Food Programme to deliver valuable aid to countries like Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
This has helped ease some of the pressure on global food prices — although they remain high — while ensuring Ukraine’s agriculture sector, a leading driver of its economy, doesn’t collapse.
“It’s very important for Ukraine, but it is even more important for the world,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP who represents Odesa — one of the few ports covered under the current agreement.
As talks resume this week, the fate of the grain deal hangs in the balance. Both sides have plenty of gripes.”