Trump to discuss agriculture, China in Smithton ahead of IUP meeting • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Hours before taking the stage at a rally at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump was the featured guest at a roundtable discussion in Smithton, Westmoreland County, on Monday that discussed China’s influence on American agriculture.

The roundtable in a barn in Smithton was hosted by the Protecting America Initiative, an organization run by former Trump administration official Richard Grenell. The group calls itself “a coalition of concerned American citizens and public policy experts committed to stopping Chinese influence in the states.”

“Nobody has done for farmers what I have done,” Trump said at the start of the hour-long call.

While Trump bragged about his administration’s work on agriculture, he claimed the Biden-Harris administration was failing to hold China accountable on agriculture and promised to call President Xi Jinping to make a previous deal he made with him in 2019.

“So the first thing I would do is probably, my first call, I’m going to call President Xi, I’m going to say, you have to honor the deal that you made,” Trump said. “We made a deal, you were going to buy $50 billion worth of American agricultural products. And I guarantee you he will buy it. 100% he will buy it.”

The second thing Trump said he would do during the call with Xi was tell China to give the death penalty to fentanyl dealers in their country who send fentanyl abroad. Trump said that the fentanyl from China enters through the southern border of the United States.

A September 22 report on CBS’s 60 Minutes gave a detailed description of the current fentanyl situation, reporting that “nearly all of the fentanyl flowing into the U.S. is produced in Mexico by two powerful drug cartels, with the chemicals purchased primarily from China.”

Farmers speaking at the roundtable told Trump about the impact inflation was having on their daily operations and expressed concern about China buying more farmland in the U.S.

Trump also reiterated his position on the pending sale of Pittsburgh-based US Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel.

“I wouldn’t let it happen,” he said. “I would help them get the steel company back on track.”

During a visit to Pittsburgh on September 2, Vice President Kamala Harry, the Democratic presidential candidate said she believes US Steel should maintain its position an American company, a position President Joe Biden also holds. “It is vital to our nation to maintain a strong American steel company,” Harris said

While China was the main topic of the conversation, Trump also discussed imposing high tariffs on companies moving to Mexico, specifically mentioning manufacturing company John Deere.

“They announced a few days ago that they’re going to move a lot of their production to Mexico,” Trump said. “I’m putting John Deere on notice right now. If you do that, we’re going to put a 200 percent tariff on anything you want to sell in the United States, so if I win, John Deere pays 200 percent.”

The company recently announced plans to move some of its production from Iowa to Mexico.

As he has done in most of his campaign appearances in Pennsylvania this cycle and in previous elections, Trump pledged to protect the fracking industry and referenced previous comments Harris made it clear during her previous presidential bid that she wanted to end frackingHowever, during her presidential campaign, Harris said she does not want to ban fracking and reiterated this point during their debate earlier this month.

Grenell and former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), both senior advisers for the Protecting American Initiative, hosted the event. Dave McCormick, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, also spoke, saying that if elected, he would stand up for farmers by taking on China.

Also attending the roundtable discussion were U.S. Rep. GT Thompson (R-15th District), chairman of the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee, and State Rep. Dan Moul (R-Adams), chairman of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, and Pennsylvania State Senate President Kim Ward (R-Westmoreland).

The Harris campaign said in a statement that Trump was not an ally to farmers during his first term and that a second term would be even worse.

“Despite all his lies and flattery, Donald Trump has used the White House to shower money on wealthy corporations and foreign companies at the expense of family farms, drive farm bankruptcies to record highs, and sacrifice small American farmers as pawns in his failed trade war with China,” Harris campaign spokesman Joseph Costello said in a statement.

Harris, he added, “believes in investing in rural America and creating opportunities for working families to get ahead, with tax cuts for the middle class, support for small farmers so they can compete, and an aggressive plan to hold big agribusiness accountable when they rip off consumers.”

This is a developing story that will be updated