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Blunt: China dispute justified, but he doesn’t side with tariffs

Senator Roy Blunt says President Trump knows very well whether the Senator is in agreement with tariffs placed on Chinese goods.

“No, I’m not,” said Missouri’s senior senator Thursday in an interview with Brownfield Ag News. Senator Blunt added, however, that the Chinese are not being fair in their dealings with the U.S. and that a trade dispute is justified.

“That’s a reasonable fight to have if you’re going to have a fight,” he said, “but to do that and do that effectively, you ought at the same time be doing everything you can to be opening alternative markets.”

The president should be working on other trade agreements, said Blunt, “so that we would have that area to look to and frankly able to really compete with China in a way that was to our advantage, and the Transpacific [Partnership] would have been good.”

Senator Blunt says he would also like to see some bilateral trade agreements made.

During the same interview, Senator Blunt said many Missouri River flooding issues would be solved if it was managed as a channel of commerce, similar to the Mississippi River. River management priorities should change, according to Senator Blunt.

“What the Corps has been doing has proven not to work, in terms of helping populate those species they’re concerned about,” according to Blunt, “so all this effort we’ve made has not produced the right result.”

Blunt says river management needs to return to being concerned about wildlife issues.

“But we also look at those with the significant overlay of how does this impact people,” he said, “how does this impact property, how does impact the economy of those areas that are near the river.”