Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts scrutinizing China tariff debate

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts told FOX Business on Wednesday that his state is closely watching how China will retaliate over President Donald Trump’s impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

“One of the things that China is doing is really threatening to put tariffs on agricultural products in retaliation for some of the tariffs the president is proposing,” Ricketts said during an interview with Liz Claman.

Nebraska leads the nation in beef exports to China, with $8.7 million, a more than 50% percent share of the U.S. total of $17.2 million, according to data recently published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Ricketts said China’s threatened tariffs on U.S. goods would have a significant impact on the state’s biggest export, soybeans.

“China buys a lot of those soybeans, and so that would be one that if they put a tariff on, that could potentially impact Nebraska,” he said on “Countdown to the Closing Bell.”

The governor has led two trade missions to Beijing to urge the government to reopen the Chinese market to American beef. In addition, Ricketts is encouraging Trump to wrap up trade negotiations, including discussion of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“We want to see NAFTA come to completion,” Ricketts said. “We’d like to see bilateral agreements with Japan. Obviously, the European Union is still hanging out there as well.”

Ricketts said his first conversation with Donald Trump as a presidential candidate was about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and how reducing tariffs would benefit Nebraska.

“We export a lot of beef and pork to Japan, and so we wanted to see TPP because it would have helped reduce the tariffs specifically on things like Nebraska beef,” Ricketts said.

The Trump administration is reconsidering the Trans-Pacific Partnership to figure out how it could benefit the U.S. economy.