China Issue Advertising in Iowa

Mark Niquette  and Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg:

China reached into the U.S. heartland in its escalating trade war over President Donald Trump’s tariffs, using an advertising supplement in Iowa’s largest newspaper to highlight the impact on the state’s soybean farmers as “the fruit of a president’s folly.’’

The four-page section in Sunday’s Des Moines Register, which carried the label “paid for and prepared solely by China Daily, an official publication of the People’s Republic of China,” featured articles including one outlining how the trade dispute is forcing Chinese importers to turn to South America instead of the U.S. for soybeans.

“Pretty savvy political play being run by China,’’ Tommy Vietor, a former national security spokesman for President Barack Obama, said on Twitter about the tactic.

The advertising targets a state critical to Trump and Republicans at a time the trade war between the world’s two largest economies is intensifying. The U.S. is imposing tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports starting Monday, on top of the $50 billion in goods already hit with levies. Meanwhile, $110 billion of goods from the U.S. will become subject to Chinese retaliatory tariffs around the same time.