美国国家公共电台 NPR Trump Adviser's Warning About Food Supply Takeover Met With Skepticism

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The White House's top trade adviser 1 is offering a bleak 2 and suspicious view of global trade. The head of the president's National Trade Council says foreign firms buying U.S. companies pose a threat to national security. As NPR's Chris Arnold reports, it's a fringe view that puts him at odds 3 with the vast majority of economists 5.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE 6: This week, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro issued a warning. He said basically bad trade policy is making America less safe today.

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PETER NAVARRO: Today, we do not have a single company in the U.S. that can make flat panel displays for our military aircraft.

ARNOLD: Here's what Navarro's worried about. The U.S. imports more than we sell to the rest of the world. That's called the trade deficit 7. And it means that some of our trading partners end up with a lot of cash. They use some of that to invest in the United States. They buy stocks. Sometimes they buy up U.S. companies. Most economists see this though as just part of global trade, which overall benefits all the countries involved. But Navarro has a darker view.

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NAVARRO: Suppose instead that it is not a benign 8 ally buying up our companies, our technologies, our farmland and our food supply chain and ultimately controlling much of our defense 9 industrial base. Rather, it is a rapidly militarizing strategic rival intent on hegemony in Asia and perhaps world hegemony.

ARNOLD: So in that scenario 10, a country like China is going to buy up all of our defense contractors 11 and take over the world. That does not sound very good. And then there was this.

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NAVARRO: We have already begun to lose control of our food supply chain.

ARNOLD: OK. Wait a minute. We're losing control of our food supply?

DERMOT HAYES: I was completely confused by that comment. It's an uninformed statement.

ARNOLD: That's Dermot Hayes. He's an agribusiness economist 4 in the farm belt at Iowa State University. So he keeps pretty close track of what's going on in the world of agriculture.

Are lots of U.S. companies in the food or agricultural area being bought up by the Chinese or something?

HAYES: There's nothing that's going on that would say that other governments are buying essential portions of our agricultural infrastructure 12.

ARNOLD: Hayes says a Chinese company did buy Smithfield Foods a few years ago. It's a big pork producer. But he says that actually was a really good thing.

HAYES: To Iowa and to the Midwest, that's been a great purchase because suddenly our exports to China skyrocketed.

ARNOLD: More jobs, more processing plants. So Hayes says that Navarro just isn't making any sense. In fact, he says the reality is the exact opposite. He says the U.S. is a massive exporter of food. So China, Japan, Mexico, lots of countries rely on us for their food supply. But Hayes says all this anti-trade talk from the Trump 13 administration, that's making those countries nervous. Joe Glauber is an economist with the International Food Policy Research Institute.

JOSEPH GLAUBER: It does tend to spook people. And I think that that's the real damage that's being done right now.

ARNOLD: Glauber says he's been speaking with farmers and farm groups in the U.S. And they're worried that other countries are starting to look elsewhere to diversify 14 imports for their food supply.

GLAUBER: They get concerned when they read reports that Mexico now is looking for potentially alternative sources of supply for soybeans and corn.

ARNOLD: Getting back to the national security issue, all this is not to say that foreign ownership of companies never creates a problem. Douglas Irwin is a Dartmouth College trade economist.

DOUGLAS IRWIN: All economists say that national security consideration should override 15 any adherence 16 to free trade. Adam Smith in "The Wealth Of Nations" going way back said defense is more important than opulence 17. So economists have always recognized that.

ARNOLD: But Irwin says the government already reviews foreign purchases of companies with military or strategic technology or significance. And it sometimes blocks those purchases. And he says Navarro just didn't provide convincing evidence that there's actually anything to worry about here. Chris Arnold, NPR News.

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