Throughout the country, U.S. agricultural exporters, including soybean and pork producers, have taken major hits in their economic numbers as a result of the tariff war with China.

Now, The Trump Administration will spend $16 billion to help farmers hurt by the US-China trade war, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced yesterday.

The fear among farmers, importers and consumers in Arizona is that Chinese tariffs placed on their goods will keep them out of the Chinese market for a long time.

“What’s going to end up happening is you end up having an impact on those businesses that import,” said economist Jim Rounds. “The tariffs will end up passing more costs to consumers, so you and I will be paying for those tariffs. In the meantime, people will adjust and businesses will adjust their supplier network from other countries. But this will create a disadvantage with China.”

China struck back at the U.S.’s tariff hike on $200 billion of imported Chinese goods with tariffs on about 5,000 types of American products reaching about $60 billion. Some of the major components of those tariffs are agricultural products including beef, soybeans, and vegetables.

China is Arizona’s third-largest exporter, shipping out goods such as meat products and cotton. According to the Arizona Beef Council, Arizona’s cattle community contributes about $435 million a year to the state’s GDP, and exports about $525 million of its total beef output to places such as China.

“I think it’s all very delicate,” Rounds said. “Trade agreements for us on the border typically mean issues with Mexico. When it comes to China, however, I think most Americans in general, especially in Arizona, feel that China really hasn’t played by the rules when it comes to trade. I think it’s been very difficult for us to swallow the way China has gone about this.”

Pig farmers in the country have faced two separate rounds of 25 percent punitive tariffs from China on their exports last year. The value of pork from the United States has dipped 14 percent so far this year and producers of the commodity are losing about $8 per pig because of the trade dispute.

“I think what you do have is a lot of conversation toward trade, which is very good,” Jaime Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­lain of J.C. Distributing in Nogales said. “It’s always very good to have these discussions and issues. This will help more people realize where their products come from and how they get their goods and the costs of those goods. I think the American public needs to educate themselves a lot more.”

The scuttlebutt around the farming and import community in Arizona is that hopes are now being turned toward finalizing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), or even expanding business with the European Union, which has called for more soybean imports.

“Our efforts should never turn away from Mexico. I think it’s something we need to continue to foster. It behooves us to have a very good relationship with our southern and northern partners,” said Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­lain. “We should never take our eye off the ball with that. I do believe that the ratification of the USMCA is extremely important for our trade future. That should be the number one thing we should focus on. But with China, the tariffs most certainly need to be addressed.”

The post China tariff war puts stress on farmers, importers in Arizona appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.

Arizona Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D) and Martha McSally (R) teamed up Tuesday to oppose the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency’s (CBP) decision to remove officers from Arizona’s ports of entry.

The CBP’s decision to transfer the personnel out of Arizona ports came after the agency saw its highest total number of daily apprehensions and encounters in over a decade twice in one week.

saw the highest total of apprehensions and encounters in over a decade on Monday, with 4,000 migrants either apprehended or encountered at ports of entry in a single day. Yesterday, that record was broken again—4,117 in a single day.

— CBP (@CBP)

“We understand the challenges that CBP faces with the recent influx of migrants to our border, and we both look forward to working with you to improve border security,” the senators wrote in a letter. “However, reducing port staffing harms security and our economy…Different options must be explored.”

The senators said the decision will harm the state’s ability to while significantly increasing port of entry wait times and encouraging illegal goods to enter the country.

“The cross-border commerce is so important for Arizona’s economy. We’ve got about 200,000 jobs that are related to cross-border commerce,” McSally said after a roundtable with CBP Monday morning. “It’s my view that we’ve got to keep the legitimate trade and travel and cross-border commerce , but we also need to secure our border and address this crisis.”

released earlier this month shows that Arizona’s trade with Mexico was more than $16 billion in 2018, a 7.7 percent increase from the previous year. The long wait times are expected to have a negative impact on the import of produce and other goods.

The senators also expressed concern with how the CBP’s decision would affect the safety of the country, as CBP officers at the ports help prevent narcotics and other illegal goods from entering the country.

Last year, 86 percent of hard narcotics seized by CBP were seized at ports of entry. In the Southwest, it was 82 percent.

The CBP’s announcement also comes amid President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border altogether.

The post McSally and Sinema raise concerns over Customs officers being removed from ports of entry appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.

Discussions about the economy generally touch upon jobs, wages, capital, and other measurements, but they don’t often recognize “innovation.” Arguably the most important metric in assessing an economy’s growth, innovation helps to assess the ways companies are becoming more efficient in their practices. And last year, it reached its highest mark since 2010.

The official measurement of , multifactor productivity, grew 1 percent last year – the fastest growth rate since 2010. Multifactor productivity measures the growth in output after measuring the effect of capital and labor. In other words, without adding more employees or capital, how are firms increasing output?

Productivity is crucial because it improves Americans’ standard of living under all circumstances. This occurs because as firms increase their profit margins through more efficient methods, they are able to increase employee salaries and/or lower prices. Either way, consumers cash in more money than they would with lower productivity.

Arizona Tech Council president and CEO Steven Zylstra highlighted the reasons why productivity has increased at its highest rate in nine years.

“I would attribute a significant amount of that enhanced productivity to technology,” Zylstra said. “I think all sorts of technologies are being used to streamline making things more productive than they historically could have been. I think that’s just going to increase significantly as we move into an era of AI and machine learning because so much will be able to be done with so little.”

Between 2000 and 2007, the U.S. experienced, on average, a 1.4 percent growth rate in productivity, which is much higher than the 1 percent growth rate last year. However, economic skeptics shouldn’t forecast an economic slowdown. Zylstra points out that this period followed the dot-com boom; because the internet was arguably the greatest technological advancement of all time, comparing the two growth rates isn’t a reasonable assessment.

With the rise of smartphones, robotics, and information technology, Zylstra believes we are well-positioned to ride this productivity wave moving forward. In fact, some of this growth even , which ranks in the top third of US states for innovation.

“Here in Phoenix, we’re in the process of outfitting the most significant chip processing plant on the planet,” he said. “It’s going to produce semiconductors with seven nanometer feature sizes. The amount of capability that we’re able to put in people’s hands is mind-boggling. I think robotics and automation, software and IT, and the massive processing power have been some of the main drivers in enhancing our productivity.”

U.S. productivity is in its best position since 2010, and the economy will react accordingly. With the development of more efficient technologies and practices, everybody wins.

The post U.S. innovation grows at highest rate since 2010 appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.