Federal

Politicians, economists and executives agree China isn't playing fair on trade. But there's a lot of disagreement about whether President Trump's hefty tariffs are the right weapon for fighting back. American farmers and Walmart shoppers are likely to feel pain in this fight, and a lot of them voted for Trump. There are two ways Americans are highly likely to get hurt in a U.S.-China trade spat. First, prices on a lot of items will almost certainly rise, and second, China is going to hit back with tariffs on American products. The other knock is expected to come when China fights back. [node:read-more:link]

House Republicans will pursue a law reauthorizing food assistance and farm subsidies without Democratic support after negotiations over changes to the so-called food-stamp program broke down, the chairman of the chamber’s Agriculture Committee said. [node:read-more:link]

Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith will be going to the U.S. Senate next month. Gov. Phil Bryant formally tapped the Republican agriculture and commerce commissioner to fill the unexpired term of Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, who is poised to go out with a win on an omnibus spending bill. Currently in his seventh term, Cochran is resigning effective April 1 for health reasons. [node:read-more:link]

Agricultural production has shifted to larger farms over the last three decades. Technology has been the primary driver of this shift, which has been large and widespread across crop and livestock commodities. Despite the shift to larger operations, family businesses still dominate U.S. agriculture: consolidation has shifted acreage and production to larger family farms. [node:read-more:link]

Perdue is the U.S. secretary of agriculture, running an agency with a $140 billion budget and a low profile. He may be the most aggressive enforcer of President Donald Trump’s pro-business and deregulatory agenda that the fewest Americans have ever heard of. [node:read-more:link]

Frustrated with both President Trump and Congress, immigrant-rights activists increasingly are turning to the courts to try to alter the country’s immigration policies — with three new lawsuits filed on Thursday alone against the Department of Homeland Security. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. lawmakers launched their latest effort to ease restrictions on international food assistance programs, which they say would free hundreds of millions of dollars a year and get aid to millions more hungry people around the world. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives introduced the “Food for Peace Modernization Act of 2018” which they want to include in the 2018 farm bill. Among other things, the bill would end a requirement that 100 percent of food aid commodities be produced in the United States, changing it to 25 percent. [node:read-more:link]

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife took a security detail on their vacation to Greece and Turkey last year, official documents show, in what one watchdog group said could be a "questionable" use of taxpayer resources. Zinke has faced questions for months over his travel expenses and use of official resources, as have other members of President Donald Trump's administration such as EPA leader Scott Pruitt, who was revealed to have spent $30,000 on security for an official trip to Italy last year. [node:read-more:link]

The $1.3 trillion government spending bill expected to be released Wednesday includes a remedy for the so-called grain glitch in the Republican tax law that gives farmers lucrative incentives to sell their products to agricultural cooperatives over other types of businesses, two House GOP aides familiar with the negotiations said. [node:read-more:link]

Much attention has been devoted to rural America since the presidential election. The press, the pundits, and the public have examined it from nearly every angle, deliberating the demographic, economic, and cultural factors that may have helped the Trump campaign capitalize on the dormant discontent of a great many. But we still don’t understand some basic facts about the people and the places that make up rural America. This is partially attributable to the destructive cultural and political narratives that tell us programs like SNAP are not a rural issue. [node:read-more:link]