This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 6th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Chinese Trade Delegation is still coming for talks after the president threatened higher tariffs on billions of dollars of imports into the U.S.

Dan Eekinson directs the Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.

He discusses the importance of trade to American producers, farmers,

and everyday Americans. We spoke this morning.

You've just returned from China. What was the mood there with respect to trade with the United States?

Well, I think people are concerned about whether or not there's going to be an agreement to end the trade war.

There is, I wouldn't say hostility, but the Chinese

scholars with whom I met were much more assertive than they had been in the

past about the about how certain they are that their government is right in

their positions and that President Trump is acting a bit too aggressively. But certainly there is interest in coming up with some

solutions that are going to work. You know, this trade war has been going on for about a

year. Negotiations have been going on for about that long to try to overcome some of the problems

that the United States has identified in China and we're very close

reportedly to to a resolution.

And just yesterday, President Trump announced

that he is going to increase the tariffs

on Chinese goods from 10% to 25% on 200 billion

worth of goods that have been subject to the lower rate for the past eight or nine

months and he's also said that he's going to subject the rest of

Chinese goods that we import to 25% tariffs. So that's kind of created a bit of a

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