US governors see wide impact of trade conflict

Not only the agriculture industry, but also the manufacturing base and investment community in the United States have felt the impact from the escalating trade tensions－a "war with everybody" as described by one state governor.

Another governor, Jay Inslee of Washington, said on Friday on the sidelines of the National Governors Association's summer meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico: "It has a very significant adverse effect on my state.

"We are the biggest apple-exporting state, and the markets have been diminished because of the responsive tariffs to the chaotic activity from the White House."

The US has started new tariffs against its top trading partners, including China, the European Union, Canada and Mexico, with those countries vowing to retaliate in kind.

The concerns are not just in the agricultural community, and it's not just specific commodities that have been hit, but all commodities under the cloud of uncertainty, said Inslee.

"In the last two weeks, I've talked to at least two or three businesspeople who want to expand in my state and have some intended plans to do that," he said.

But the increased prices of aluminum and steel and the tariffs' effect on the ability to export to China have added uncertainty to their plans, he said.

Inslee also said a company in his state has a very exciting market it wants to create in China, but now its plans are also under a cloud of uncertainty.

Inslee, a Democrat, said the great uncertainty in the investment community comes from people's belief that US President Donald Trump "has no plan about where he is going on this".

"They understand if you are going to succeed in a trade conflict, it is better to have allies than to go it alone, and he (Trump) has ruptured every alliance that has been effective in the past 200 years that America has had," he said. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said, "We are starting a war with everybody at the same time, where we have no allies."

In the soybean arena, massive contracts have been canceled, and nations like Brazil and Canada are picking up the difference, said Malloy, who also attended the meeting in Santa Fe.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said on the sidelines of the meeting, "We grow more food in this country than we can consume, (so) it's only common sense we find a way to trade that to places which need our food and find things they can manufacture that we need."

He said that as a result of the US casting uncertainty on trade relationships with much of the world, people can't make investments and can't anticipate what their needs are.

"Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not going to resolve anything. It's just going to bring hardship to literally millions of Americans," said Hickenlooper.