Stalled trade talks between Beijing and Washington are exacerbating a slump in the U.S. Farm Belt, and few farmers believe an aid package being assembled by the Trump administration will be enough to compensate them for the economic damage, the Wall Street Journal reported. Agriculture has been among the U.S. economic sectors hit hardest by the year-long trade conflict with China. Now that a deal has slipped from the grasp of negotiators, farmers are facing the likelihood that the deepest downturn in the agricultural economy since the 1980s could be prolonged. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in the absence of a deal, is cobbling together a farm-relief program that will total somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion, according to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. This is the second such aid package since the trade fight began. Many farmers doubt that the scale of that aid package is anywhere near sufficient to make up for a trade spat that has shut them out of a lucrative Chinese market of 1.4 billion consumers.
