Photo taken on June 10, 2019 shows Blake Hurst's rain-soaked fields in Tarkio, Missouri, the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
Noting that it took the Congress months to pass the disaster relief bill, Waters said he doesn't expect to receive any money until weeks later. Still, he prefers a stable market rather than a trade aid package.
"The question has to be, are we losing these markets permanently?" Hurst said, noting that trade tensions in some ways make the United States "not a dependable supplier" for soybeans.
"Obviously we're going to put tariffs on you. We're going to announce tariffs in a tweet. So they can happen at any time. So if I'm a grain buyer anywhere in the world, I'm looking for a supplier I can trust, and we're no longer that supplier," he said. "We'll be paying for this for years."
Waters said he hopes "we can get back to pick up where we left off before all this tension started."
"I still have hope that we can get it ironed out," he struck an optimistic tone.
