The Farm Bureau is urging a series of steps to address the trade situation: approval of the agreement with Mexico and Canada that would replace NAFTA, joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiating free-trade agreements with Japan and the European Union and confronting China’s trade abuses with a multinational approach.

The organization is also calling for the elimination of the administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Not only do those result in retaliatory tariffs that hurt agriculture, it says, but they also raise prices for products needed to operate farms — from grain storage facilities to machinery parts.

The bureau called for “continued and growing access to world markets for commodities and products produced by Nebraska farm and ranch families.”

It remains to be seen how trade issues will play out in 2019, however. Midwestern lawmakers, including those from Nebraska and Iowa, have complained loudly and often about the trade situation and its effect on farm country.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the incoming chairman of the Finance Committee, has signaled that he’s open to legislation aimed at pulling back on the tariffs. But it’s far from clear whether there would be enough votes to push such a measure to the finish line, particularly if Trump objects to it.

China and the United States just announced something of a truce — a three-month cease-fire in the back-and-forth — but the long-standing trade disputes between the two countries are so complex that they still could take years to resolve.

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