WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) – Incumbent U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin was in Wausau on Tuesday to tour a facility that’s one of the area’s top suppliers of ginseng to overseas buyers.
Senator Baldwin, who is on the campaign trail hoping to defend her seat from Republican challenger Eric Hovde, was joined by Democrat Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono for the visit to Hsu Ginseng Farms to try and get a better understanding of the industry’s changing landscape and what it means for Wisconsin farmers.
Throughout the visit, the business’s owner described the changes the ginseng market has gone through since the COVID pandemic and the impact of the U.S. and China trade war has had on his business, citing tariffs on Chinese-made goods as one of the reasons that their ability to turn a profit has decreased.
When asked about trade’s effect on the industry following the tour, Senator Baldwin said, “It (the tariffs) impacted many of the agricultural businesses in our state. It impacted dairy when there were retaliatory tariffs against cheese…we’re the number one cranberry producers in the country as well as our ginseng producers really hard here in Wisconsin. It’s a specialty crop that is produced in this county, so this is a tariff situation that is a double whammy in this part of the state, and it has ripple impacts on parts of the agriculture industry.”
The US goods trade deficit with China increased to $382.3 billion in 2022, which represented an 8.3% rise from 2021, while governments around the world have placed tariffs on China in recent years for a wide range of reasons, such as creditable allegations that they’ve stolen intellectual property from technology companies as well as universities in hopes to improve their military infrastructure before their expected invasion of Taiwan, which was highlighted by the BBC reporting last month that police in South Korea arrested two former Samsung executives accused of stealing U.S. and other nations trade and technology secrets worth over $3 billion for the Chinese government.
The race between Baldwin and Hovde has reached its closest point to date, with recent polls showing the Senate race a statistical tie, which historically means the Republican candidate is likely ahead due to many national polls under-surveying Republican voters. Internal polling from the National Republican Senate Committee shows Hovde ahead of Baldwin for the first time this cycle by a margin of 48% to 47%, while the final Harvard/Harris poll found former president Trump now holds a two percentage point lead in battleground states like Wisconsin.
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