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An In-Depth Look at the WTO Panel Report on China’s Grain Subsidies

By Ben Conner, USW Vice President of Policy

On February 19, 2019, the World Trade Organization (WTO) released the final report of the panel in the U.S. case alleging that China has not complied with its domestic support commitments on wheat and rice. While the panel disagreed with a few arguments, it agreed with the accusation that China was far out of compliance due to the operation of the market price support (MPS) program for certain commodities.

U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) believes it is important for its overseas customers and the farmers it represents to better understand why the United States brought this case to the WTO and how the panel reached its conclusion.

Most countries with sizable agriculture sectors provide some domestic support (subsidies or safety net programs) for farmers. The countries that negotiated the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) established disciplines for domestic support because they had experienced the price suppressing effects of foreign or, in some cases, domestic agricultural subsidies. The WTO members agreed to set limits on the types of support that could impact farmer’s production decisions and, thus, distort trade. A government subsidy that incentivizes the farmer to plant more wheat than barley is one example. On a large enough scale (such as across a country), that additional production can significantly suppress wheat prices for other wheat farmers who are not eligible for these subsidies.

Developed countries like the United States, Japan, and European states provided most agricultural subsidies at the time the AoA was negotiated. Over time, these countries either reformed their programs or have stayed within their limits. However, within the past decade, trade distorting domestic support has shifted significantly to developing countries, with China and India leading the way. Those countries are, in many cases, far out of compliance with their WTO commitments.

The U.S. government recognized that if any countries are allowed to flout WTO rules consistently, the incentive for others to follow the rules collapses. It also kills the potential for productive negotiations, since negotiating partners must be convinced that others will uphold their end of the bargain. Therefore, in 2016, the U.S. launched this case against China both to address the particular concerns in China and to demonstrate that the rules apply to all countries (Australia, Brazil, and Guatemala recently launched similar cases against India over its support for sugar production).

In the China domestic support case, the U.S. legal team chose to focus specifically on a measure called market price support (MPS) to demonstrate that China had breached its commitment on aggregate measurement of support (AMS). MPS sets a commodity’s floor price at which a farmer can sell to a government buyer instead of to a private buyer. This keeps internal prices artificially high and signals farmers to produce more of the supported commodity.

The AoA has a specific formula to calculate how MPS contributes to AMS: the quantity of eligible production multiplied by the difference between the annual support price and a fixed reference price established in the AoA. This was a legal case, so there were arguments about everything, but the most important question was what constitutes eligible production.

China’s argument was that eligible production is only the amount procured by the government. But the panel agreed with the United States, saying eligible production is the “amount of product which qualifies to be purchased from producers,” not the amount that is, in fact, purchased. The only limitations in Chinese rules were that the price supports only applied in six provinces (covering approximately 80 percent of production) and to wheat that met basic quality standards (99 percent of production in those provinces). In 2015, this was 103 MMT out of the 130 MMT produced. In its notification to the WTO for that year, China claimed only 21 MMT. Under that notification, China claimed it was complying; under the panel’s methodology, this quantity put China far out of compliance.

The 2015 support price was 2360 renminbi (RMB) per metric ton (MT) and the panel confirmed that the fixed reference price was 1698 RMB/MT. The difference between the two times the 103 MMT of eligible production equals 68 billion RMB, or 22.4 percent of the value of production. Since China’s WTO limit is 8.5 percent, China’s AMS for wheat in 2015 was nearly triple its allowed limit. This AMS figure only accounts for MPS – the panel did not review a suite of other subsidies available to Chinese wheat farmers that would likely increase the size of China’s AMS violation. The panel made a similar finding for rice and did not make calculations for corn due to technical reasons.

The United States and other countries have been arguing for years that China has a responsibility to bring its programs into compliance so that its farm production decisions are no longer based on artificial price signals or other incentives that violate China’s WTO commitments.

Now they – and thousands of wheat farmers outside China – have a WTO panel decision to back them up.

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Fighting for Fairness Through the Rules-Based Trading System

On Feb. 15, 2019, the United States submitted a counter notification, co-sponsored by Canada, in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Committee on Agriculture on India’s market price support for pulse crops – based on publicly available information. With this counter notification, the U.S. government continues to use the rules-based trading system established by the WTO as an appropriate and welcome step toward fairness and transparency for all its member countries.

In May 2018, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) formally questioned data India has reported to the WTO about its market price support programs for wheat and rice from marketing years 2010/11 to 2013/14. And in 2016, U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) and the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) welcomed two trade dispute actions by the USTR challenging Chinese government policies that distort the wheat market and harm wheat growers throughout the rest of the world.

Specifically, in September 2016 a U.S. trade enforcement action challenged the level of China’s trade-distorting market price support programs for wheat as well as for corn and rice. In describing its action, the USTR said domestic price support to Chinese farmers “significantly exceeds China’s aggregate measure of support commitments under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.” In December that year, a U.S. dispute case alleged that China is not fairly administering its annual tariff rate quotas (TRQ) for corn, rice and 9.64 million metric tons of imported wheat. This request stated that China’s TRQ administration unfairly impedes wheat export opportunities.

The WTO is expected to announce the panel decision in the next few weeks on the original U.S. challenge to China’s domestic agricultural subsidies. The TRQ challenge also continues moving through the dispute process at the WTO.

Progress in these dispute cases indicate the WTO dispute mechanisms continue to provide an effective way to challenge unfair practices and policies. But the approach represented by the Trump administration’s use of unilateral tariffs and the threat of escalation to challenge unfair trade practices threatens the stability of the global trading system. That said, instability channeled properly could be beneficial to the trading system and result in greater long-term stability if it results in eliminating trade barriers, rather than creating new ones.

The past two decades have been a lost opportunity for the WTO negotiating function as major countries like China have refused to take on new responsibilities. Perhaps this unfortunate situation will be the wake-up calls countries need to realize that restricting trade and unfairly advantaging domestic industries in global markets winds up hurting everyone.

USW’s stakeholders hope that that the Administration’s alternative policy does result in positive shifts toward a more open trade environment that encourages strong domestic development in all countries. Yet the Administration’s continued use of the WTO dispute settlement and counter notification processes is also a positive sign that trade disciplines, supported by most of the world, will remain an essential part of global trade.

 

 

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USW Shares Trade Opportunities with a Post-Brexit United Kingdom

By Ben Conner, USW Vice President of Policy

Last week, U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) submitted comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on negotiating objectives for a potential trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom (UK). The UK has been part of the European Union (EU) since before the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and until recently has had no independent trade policy.

The 2016 “Brexit” vote to leave the EU changed this, and left the UK scrambling to hire new trade negotiators (even outsourcing leadership of the negotiations with the EU to a former negotiator from New Zealand) to untangle the decades of integration with the EU and figure out what may be put back together. The UK will also be busy negotiating new trade agreements outside the EU to replace the ones it will lose, unless a post-Brexit deal with the EU precludes an independent trade and regulatory policy.

There were pros and cons to Brexit for the British people, and the same is true for its effects on trade relations between the United States and the UK. There is now an opportunity to expand trade between both countries and address some of the tariff and regulatory barriers that have increased the costs of importing certain kinds of U.S. wheat. Unfortunately, one of the risks of Brexit is that our customers may see their markets limited due to the loss of unfettered access to continental markets.

The UK is also free to pursue a regulatory policy that emphasizes science, in contrast to the so much of what we’ve seen out of the EU. The UK has typically been one of the strongest voices for reasonable, science-based regulatory policies within the EU, and USW is but one of many opinions hoping for improved policies in a post-Brexit UK, while also encouraging EU leaders to stand up to activists who are often either dismissive or irresponsible about modern farming practices and technologies.

While there are always challenges, U.S. wheat farmers want to have positive trading relationships with both the EU and the UK. We hope that the Trump Administration can negotiated high-standard, modern free trade agreements with both.

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2019 Trade Policy Outlook

By Ben Conner, USW Vice President of Policy

If there is anything we learned from 2018, it is that the trade policy landscape is unpredictable. While many upcoming or ongoing issues are known, there are a range of possible outcomes within each, some of which could drastically alter the trade landscape in the future.

Let us start with China. This week, U.S. and Chinese negotiators met in Beijing to work toward resolving the current trade dispute, which has seen tariffs slapped on over $300 billion in trade. According to the U.S. Trade Representative, there is a hard deadline of Mar. 1 to reach a deal that will at least prevent further imposition of tariffs. U.S. wheat farmers have been shut out of China since March 2018, leaving their Chinese customers scrambling for other sources. The next couple months could reveal if trade will resume this year, or if the conflict will continue.

The United States has also initiated formal processes for trade negotiations with Japan, the European Union, and the United Kingdom (U.S. Wheat Associates will submit comments on the UK negotiations next week). However, there are still a number of unknowns, such as the scope and length of negotiations with Japan, the inclusion of agriculture in negotiations with the EU and the nature of the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU.

The new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will likely be submitted to Congress this year to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but shifting political dynamics in the United States complicate Congressional approval and implementation of the agreement.

There is the threat of new tariffs on automobiles under Section 232 authority, potentially covering hundreds of billions in trade. While this is mitigated somewhat due to side letters negotiated alongside USMCA and the promise to avoid imposing tariffs on Japan and the EU while negotiations are ongoing, declaring automobile imports to be a national security threat has the potential to enrage U.S. trading partners and lead to new retaliatory measures.

Finally, there is the possibility that the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body will cease to function by December 2019. This is the culmination of over a decade of complaints by the United States about the way the Appellate Body functions. It is important for other countries to engage the United States to find a solution, because if a solution is not reached, it will mean the effective end of the WTO’s dispute settlement function and the ability of countries to enforce trade commitments.

In other words, based on the uncertainty these trade issues represent, we cannot expect 2019 to be less exciting than 2018.

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To Ag or Not to Ag*

By Ben Conner, USW Vice President of Policy.

To Ag. That is obviously the answer. The question is if the trade negotiations between the United States and the European Union should include agriculture at all. We already covered that in August after the two governments agreed to begin negotiations.

This week, U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) submitted comments to the U.S. Trade Representative on wheat growers’ priorities for the negotiations. The first priority, of course, is that the negotiations should cover agricultural products like wheat. That would avoid running afoul of WTO rules requiring free trade agreements to cover substantially all trade. It would also avoid a likely quick death in the U.S. Congress should an agreement without agriculture be presented to it.

The second priority is that the threat of Section 232 tariffs on automobiles produced in the EU should be dropped. Not only is it an ill-conceived idea to treat imported cars as national security threats, but the potential for retaliation is enormous since the U.S. imported about $40 billion in passenger cars from the EU in 2017.

Assuming those issues are addressed, USW wants to see protective EU wheat tariffs eliminated. Most EU imports from the United States are duty-free, but only for wheat that meets certain quality thresholds. Full tariff elimination would benefit buyers in the EU who may see opportunities to import U.S. wheat with different qualities.

The most significant challenges U.S. wheat growers currently face in the EU are non-tariff barriers also designed primarily to protect EU wheat producers. Pesticide residue and plant breeding regulations, phytosanitary tests and labeling requirements can disrupt U.S. wheat imports and create additional market uncertainty. A comprehensive agreement with the EU is long overdue and should end this sea of troubles.

*With sincere apologies to Bill Shakespeare.

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Administration Help Needed to Protect U.S. Wheat Exports to Japan

Following is a transcript of oral testimony by U.S. Wheat Associates President Vince Peterson at a public hearing held Dec. 10, 2018, by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on potential trade negotiations with Japan.

“Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of U.S. wheat farmers about trade negotiations with Japan.“Our mission is to develop, maintain, and expand international markets for U.S. wheat farmers, and one of our most critical markets is Japan.

“Given its demographic and consumption trends, Japan is generally a market where we seek to maintain our strong 53 percent market share, but today we face an imminent collapse. Frankly, this is because of provisions negotiated by [a previous administration] for our benefit under the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Our competitors in Australia and Canada will now benefit from those provisions, as U.S. farmers watch helplessly.

“Over the immediate past 5 years, Japan is our largest, most reliable and valuable market. The importer is Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries or MAFF. MAFF is the only entity that can import duty-free; all others must pay a prohibitive tariff. After MAFF imports, it resells wheat to flour millers with a significant mark-up; currently in excess of $150 per ton. This is the equivalent of a 60 to 70 percent ad valorem tariff at today’s prices.

“While we certainly wouldn’t hold up this system as an example, it has historically worked for us in Japan. Wheat is higher priced than elsewhere, but MAFF still imports enormous quantities of high quality American wheat. Since the wheat market in Japan is relatively stable, there tends to be little variation in quantity of imports from the US, Canada, and Australia, the three principal suppliers.

“This will start changing in 2019 as the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership) takes effect.

“There will be an immediate seven percent drop in the mark-up for Canadian and Australian wheat. By April it will have gone down by 12 percent. In very real terms, as of April 1, 2019, U.S. wheat will face a 40 cent per bushel, or $14 per metric ton, resale price disadvantage to Australia and Canada.

“After 9 years the U.S. will face an automatic premium of 70 dollars per ton. But by that, time most of the market will be long gone.

“Japanese food processors are looking at ways to reduce their exposure to U.S. wheat right now. They will reformulate products to adapt to wheat from different origins because they will have to. If they don’t, their competitors will.

“We are relieved that this Administration is prioritizing negotiations with Japan. We urgently need a solution that will fix the enormous vulnerability created by CPTPP.

“There are other improvements that can be made, such as ‘WTO Plus” sanitary and phytosanitary rules, but for us, nothing is more important than fixing the mark-up disparity.

“American farmers have been travelling to Japan promoting U.S. wheat since shortly after World War Two. We have had an office in Tokyo for over six decades. We have spent countless hours and millions of farmers’ hard-earned dollars building this market.

“During that time the Japanese milling industry has become an indispensable partner for U.S. wheat, particularly for farmers whose wheat is exported out of the Pacific Northwest. All of that is at risk without a quick U.S.-Japan agreement.

“U.S. wheat farmers and Japan’s flour milling industry hope that we can maintain provisional equivalence for U.S. wheat imports while our two countries conduct ongoing, good faith negotiations.

“We thank you for understanding the plight of these farmers, who are already facing severe trade disruptions in other markets. As you are well aware, the United States has not sold one kernel of wheat to China, our fifth largest export market, since March 1, 2018.

“We urge you to act quickly to save our market in Japan. Thank you.”

For more information about what is at stake for U.S. wheat farmers under the CPTPP agreement, visit the USW website at https://www.uswheat.org/policy/trade-negotiations/ and click on “Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).” Use this link to access USW’s written submission to the USTR on trade negotiations with Japan.

Vince Peterson, President, U.S. Wheat Associates

 

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Diverse Group of U.S. Farmers Visit Cuban Farms, Discuss Future Relationships

U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) is very pleased to see that the grass roots effort to build a lasting, open trading relationship between Cuba is still going strong.

Delegates from the U.S. wheat, soybean, corn, poultry, potato, rice, sorghum and barley industries recently traveled to Cuba to meet with Cuban government officials and farmers. Kansas wheat farmers Doug and Terry Jo Keesling and Kansas Wheat Director of Communications Marsha Boswell represented the wheat industry at the Cuba-U.S. Agriculture Business Conference sponsored by the U.S. Agricultural Coalition for Cuba. The coalition believes that the improvement of agricultural trade between the U.S. and Cuba is the foundation for building successful and enduring relations between both countries.

“The reason I’m here is not to sell potatoes,” said participant Carl Hoverson, CEO of Hoverson Farms, Larimore, N.D., “but to help people live better.”

Boswell reports* that the traditional Cuban diet is made up of rice, black beans, chicken, bread and locally-produced fruits and root vegetables. Much of the food must be imported including an estimated 30 million bushels of wheat the Cuban government currently imports from the EU and Canada. U.S. hard red winter (HRW) wheat is an ideal source for Cuba’s needs, but political choices on both sides related to the long-standing U.S. embargo (known in Cuba as el bloqueo, “the blockade”), prevent that trade.

Under the embargo, Cuba can buy certain U.S. products and may finance the purchases until the products arrive in Cuba, with one exception. Food purchases, which have been allowed since 2000, must be paid in cash up front, before the ships set sail.

Boswell said U.S. Congressman Rick Crawford of Arkansas, spoke to the group about pending legislation that would allow extension of credit terms from U.S. entities to Cuba to purchase food.  Half of the U.S. rice production is grown in his district.

He said, “It’s not about rice; it’s not about wheat; it’s not about chicken. It’s about U.S. ag commodities and market access to areas that have really been difficult for us, and this is a market that I would certainly like to see us participate in.”

After hearing from Cuban government officials who expressed interest in easing trade restrictions with the United States, participants visited a farmer’s market in Havana and toured two farmer cooperatives.

“We are far from reaching our potential. We need technology, modern equipment and timely inputs,” said the president of the first cooperative. For example, Boswell said he noted they know tilling the soil is bad for the land, but that the cooperative does not have the equipment needed to reduce tillage.

While planting genetically modified crops is not yet allowed in Cuba, there is research being done in laboratories. Boswell said Ambassador Juan Jose Leon Vega, Cuban Ministry of Agriculture, International Affairs Division, told the group, “It would be a benefit to the world if it was demonstrated that GMO was safe and could be planted to end hunger. There are 77 million hungry in Latin America.”

Amb. Vega also summarized the position of the Cuban government on trade.

“Farmers in the U.S. and Cuba can have better relationships,” he told Boswell and the other participants. “There is a strong distinction in Cuba between the American government and the American people. We want people to be able to do business together.”

Texas wheat farmer and Vice President of the National Association of Wheat Growers Ben Scholz makes a similar point.

“After visiting Cuba, it is clear that a consistent market for U.S. wheat can be developed in the country,” he said. “With global competition growing rapidly, ending the embargo and easing current regulations that restrict trade with Cuba could provide a much-needed boost for U.S. farmers.”

To read more about USW’s position on trade with Cuba, visit our website at https://www.uswheat.org/policy/trade-barriers/.

*Marsha Boswell’s report on the conference and a list of U.S. participants is posted here: https://kswheat.com/news/2018/11/16/us-farmers-visit-cuban-farms-discuss-future-relationships.

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Twenty-Three Pages You Just Cannot Miss

By Ben Conner, USW Vice President of Policy

 

Longtime readers of “Wheat Letter” know that there is a certain time of year when the “Wheat Letter” must be opened. When its content must be consumed with abandon. When one must read an article so important that – despite all the other wonderful “Wheat Letter” content provided throughout the year – this alone would justify the subscription.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, that time is now. This is the “Wheat Letter” post you have been waiting for. This is the one where we spin the tale of the “National Trade Estimate” report.

 

You ask, what is it about the National Trade Estimate that is so important? Why do you spend hours (days!) every year scouring the world to develop one long submission of trade policy issues to present to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)?

 

I am glad you asked. The straightforward answer is that USTR also asked. In 2019, for the 34th time, USTR will release a report on trade barriers around the world. In preparation, the agency published a “Federal Register” notice asking organizations like ours to catalogue all the policy challenges that disrupt U.S. exports.

 

While we aimed for brevity, globally dispersed conspirators had other plans. Twenty-three pages later and spanning a dozen countries, we have documented some of the most consequential policies affecting U.S. wheat exports today. These are limited to the policies that we believe to be inconsistent with each country’s World Trade Organization obligations and for various reasons the list is not exhaustive. We talk about domestic support, export subsidies, tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers, phytosanitary problems, and more.

 

Go ahead, take a look. If you love trade policy as much as me, you may still be bored but it could be helpful. After all, the point of listing these trade barriers is eliminating them. Without attention on barriers, governments will never work to solve them. And solving impediments to trade between U.S. farmers and their overseas customers is what we are all about here on the U.S. Wheat Associates trade policy team.

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A Wild Trade Ride

By Ben Conner, USW Vice President of Policy

U.S. trade policy has been going through a wild ride recently. The current U.S. administration believes that the existing trade architecture is outdated or constricting, and new forms of leverage are needed to achieve its goals. Meanwhile, they have correctly pointed out that some countries seem to interpret trade commitments as rules to ignore until caught, and then to be circumvented. In the words of President Trump, “they have been taking advantage of us.”

In our view, this perspective has a ring of truth but understates the major benefits of international trade institutions to the United States and may have long-term costs. However, using the space such leverage creates has certainly produced results in trade talks, including an updated U.S.-Korea agreement, a completed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation, renewed efforts to address longstanding U.S. complaints at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and agreements to begin negotiations with Japan and the European Union.

This situation has even allowed U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) to make progress on some longstanding issues, so we certainly appreciate the effort to use the tools available in ways that can help U.S. wheat farmers and their customers.

Overall, these tactics have shifted the U.S. role from a bulwark of the global trading system to a major disruptor. The Trump Administration is making a case that the rules-based system has been inadequate in disciplining policies of countries like China that have pursued state-led economic growth at the expense of once-vibrant industries in the United States and elsewhere. Regardless of one’s views on the approach, this case does deserve consideration and new rules will likely be needed to keep the rules-based system relevant.

Of course, we do not know fully what the cost of these tactics will be. The most obvious cost to U.S. wheat farmers is being shut out of the growing Chinese wheat market, uncertainty during the NAFTA negotiations and vulnerability created by the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The imposition or threat of unilateral tariff barriers is particularly worrisome and has damaged crucial trade relationships.

USW will continue to question certain approaches that we believe could disrupt the hard-won, mutually beneficial trade between the wheat farmers we represent and their overseas customers. But we will also strongly support the Administration when its approach can help strengthen the international trading system and make trade freer. If that is the ultimate outcome perhaps the ride will have been worth it.

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In Spite of Trade Conflicts, U.S. Wheat Farmers Will Not Abandon Customers in China

By Vince Peterson, USW President

Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture Han Jun recently acknowledged the decades of work that U.S. farmers have put into growing the Chinese market for U.S agriculture. He then warned that this market may never come back to where it was if the trade dispute with the United States continues much longer.

We can guarantee the Vice Minister, and the wheat food industry in China, that U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) and the farmers we represent will not turn our backs on our outstanding customers in China. We remain dedicated to our core mission in China, as we are everywhere in the world, to bring profitability and value to our customers even if that is temporarily more difficult today.

Presumably, Chinese leaders believe that U.S. farmers can persuade the Trump Administration to end this trade war with China. However, U.S. farmers have been clear with their own government that China’s predictable response to the conflict has harmed them and we have supported negotiations to resolve this conflict. While we agree that escalating rounds of tariffs are a bad idea, we also believe that many of the U.S. government complaints about China’s policies are valid.

In our experience, state disruption of the wheat trade has been an enormous problem, severely limiting opportunities and profitability for both U.S. farmers and our wheat food industry customers in China. Through opaque administration of its wheat tariff rate quota (TRQ), China has deprived its flour mills of an average of 6.5 MMT of imported wheat annually over the past decade. In fact, recent import volumes are still well below what China imported in the 1980s and early 1990s; that is, before it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). One could be forgiven for thinking China was a more promising market before joining the WTO than after; almost entirely because of excessive subsidies to the domestic wheat crop in recent years, as well as tight limits on TRQ access. This is why the U.S. government, under the Obama Administration, initiated two WTO cases on these issues in the fall of 2016. The prosecution of those cases have been continued and pressed forward by the Trump Administration. We are highly supportive of this action.

The Chinese government should recognize that its many years of flouting international commitments and highly interventionist “state capitalism” have led directly to the present conflict. If China had lived up to the commitments made when it joined the WTO, it is highly doubtful that we would still find ourselves in this situation. If Chinese leaders want to avoid further conflict and bolster the international trading system that they claim to defend, China can first start behaving like a responsible economy and adhere to its trade commitments in both letter and spirit. Of course, we are urging the same from the United States, which must also approach China with clear demands and a path towards achieving them.

Nevertheless, we are confident that this trade confrontation will one day be resolved. In the meantime, we will continue to reach out to our customers and friends in China, to reassure them of our unfailing dedication to our work with them. Further, we will make the guarantee that, once this trade dispute is resolved and behind us, we will work harder than ever to continue earning their business as we chart a path, together, to build the commercial channels that hold so much promise for Chinese and American industries and people.

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