China deal

Exciting news about China. I certainly wish the country could move on from all of the hate speak, political backstabbing and wrangling over differences instead of working together and coming to agreements. BUT!! On the subject of a trade agreement with China, we were cautiously excited when President Trump told reporters back in mid-October.

We've come to a deal pretty much subject to getting it written.

And Tuesday, New Year's Eve, the president tweeted that the deal would be signed at the White House January 15th.

Not many specifics made public yet, except that for agricultural products, the deal commits China to make as much as $80 billion in purchases by China over the next two years, on average, 40 billion a year.

Agriculture Department chief economist Rob Johanson, $80 billion sounds like a huge amount, but Johansson says not out of the realm of possibility.

In previous years, China has purchased almost 25 billion from us. So they're committing to a purchase that 25 billion plus an additional 15 billion in each of the next two years, totaling 80 billion purchases made possible not just by reducing tariffs, but also by China making so-called structural changes in how it deals with U.S. product imports. Those changes not yet made public.