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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group and customarily a close ally of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, is launching a campaign on Monday to oppose Trump’s trade tariff policies.

The new campaign, detailed first to Reuters, will provide an analysis of the financial hit each U.S. state stands take from potential retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. It argues that Trump is risking a global trade war that will hit the wallets of U.S. consumers.

For example, the Chamber’s report finds that $3.9 billion worth of exports from Texas could be targeted by retaliatory tariffs, including $1.6 billion from Mexico and $1.4 billion from China. Texas sends $321 million in meat exports to Mexico each year that could be affected. It exports $494 million in grain sorghum to China.

The Chamber also is expected to spend millions of dollars on the midterm elections this year in an effort to help elect like-minded candidates who back free trade, immigration and reduced taxes. It has already backed candidates in Republican primaries, who share those goals.

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European companies could benefit from President Donald Trump's escalating trade war, analysts at Citi wrote to clients.

"Winning the trade war, albeit not from the sidelines anymore, remains a real opportunity for Europe," Citi said.

European corporates can steal market share from American firms in markets like China while also benefitting in bilateral trade agreements as US influence wanes.

This could lead to both anger from Trump and damage to the US economy.

As the growing trade war between the Trump administration and the rest of the world threatens to boil over, Europe and European companies stand to be the biggest beneficiaries — if they play their cards right.

That's according to some analysts at Citi, who believe the burgeoning conflict provides "a real opportunity" for Europe.

Citi's weekly European economics note, compiled by a team led by Christian Schulz, argues that rising tariffs put in place by the Trump administration could allow European corporates to gain a competitive advantage over their American counterparts.

"Winning the trade war, albeit not from the sidelines anymore, remains a real opportunity for Europe," the team wrote to clients late last week.

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China is explicitly using tariffs as a wedge issue designed to split "apart different domestic groups in the US," according to leaked plans.

As a trade war looms between the two countries, Beijing issued a propaganda notice to Chinese media explaining the official game plan for handling the issue.

It was then leaked online and published by the censorship-monitoring site China Digital Times. Alongside instructions to avoid quoting President Donald Trump or other US officials and to focus instead on "economic brightspots," the government gave outlets a description of its trade strategy.

Vice Premier Liu, the notice said, "has indicated that this stage of the U.S.-China trade conflict requires calm and rationality."

It added: "We stop negotiation for now, acting tit for tat, roll out corresponding policies, hold public opinion at a good level without escalating it, limit scope, and strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups in US."

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If the U.S. and China don’t solve the trade dispute that began Friday, American soybean farmers could need government aid by fall to ensure their businesses don’t collapse, according to Iowa soybean farmer Ron Heck.

China is the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans, importing more than $12.4 billion worth of the oil seed in 2017. But in response to a 25% tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods imposed by the Trump administration, Beijing retaliated by slapping tariffs worth $34 billion on 545 American goods -- including soybeans.

The Asian giant is already expected to cancel American soybean imports due to the 25% tariff on the legume and, according to Bloomberg, has already purchased 19 cargoes from Brazil.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it could,” Heck said Friday during an interview with FOX Business’ Dagen McDowell. “Farmers want trade, they don’t want aid.”

Heck said that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue promised that if the escalating trade dispute had not been solved by Labor Day, he would put together an aid package to protect the rural economy. Fall is the biggest season for American soybean farmers.

Until then, Heck said the only option for farmers is to wait and see whether the world’s two biggest economies settle the tariff discussions.

“These tariffs are ill-conceived and totally inappropriate,” Heck said. “Using food as a weapon, raising the price of food to the Chinese people and devastating United States’ farmers is a lose-lose situation for everyone.”

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“The assault on the American auto industry is over,” President Trump declared last spring in Detroit, promising auto executives that he would throttle back Obama-era regulations on vehicle pollution.

The moment embodied one of Mr. Trump’s main political promises — to promote pro-business policies that unshackle industry and the economy. He has pledged to create an oil and gas boom that will spawn “massive new wealth” and to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement to eliminate “big trade barriers” for American products. His new taxes on metal imports “have already had major, positive effects” on classic Rust Belt industries like steel and aluminum, the White House has said.

Even as the president’s pro-business stance is broadly embraced by the corporate community, in some significant cases the very industries that Mr. Trump has vowed to help say that his proposals will actually hurt them. They also warn that policies designed to aid one group will eat into someone else’s business in ways that policymakers should have anticipated.

“I would like to tell the president, ‘Man, you are messing up our market,’” said Kevin Scott, a soybean farmer in South Dakota and the secretary of the American Soybean Association. The idea of changing Nafta, he said, “gives us a lot of heartburn in farm country.”

At the same time, Mr. Scott said, China’s threat to impose tariffs this week on United States soybeans — in direct response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on other Chinese-made products — is already having a negative effect on the prices farmers see. In recent days, Canada imposed its own retaliatory tariffs against the United States. And on Friday, General Motors warned that Mr. Trump’s threat of tariffs on imported cars could backfire, killing American jobs and leading to “a smaller G.M.”

Mr. Scott voted for Mr. Trump, and he approves of administration efforts to roll back environmental regulations, “But if we lose those Chinese and Mexican markets, it will be hard to get them back,” he said. China and Mexico are the two biggest markets for American soybean exports.

Richard Newell, president of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, described the administration’s overall approach as “whac-a-mole policy” that suggests a lack of appreciation of the complexity of global commerce. “The law of unintended consequences abounds,” Mr. Newell added.

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However, wheat growers are already feeling the pinch. Chinese wheat buyers stopped making purchases in March after Beijing threatened a 25 percent tariff in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, the National Association of Wheat Growers said July 6.

On June 1, a farmer with 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans expected a $42,000 return. Today that return has dropped to a negative $126,000, said Christopher Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

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Washing machines

Whirlpool (WHR) is hiring 200 more workers and praised the initial tariffs that went into effect in January, citing its long-running battle with Korea's LG.

But by April, the price of washing machines was up 9 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In May, prices climbed 6 percent. Both are the biggest jumps since the BLS started collecting statistics in 1977, according to the Washington Post.

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Originally posted by CHAS:
China and Mexico been buying a lot of soybeans and cotton for years.
Brazil and Australia will now be selling soybeans to China.
Mexico now has agreements with Argentina to buy soybeans and to buy other goods from Argentina.
I think China will get cotton from India and Australia.

Want to buy some soybeans? Prices are at the levels reached in 1965. Corn prices are at 1992 levels.