In a defiant display of “America first” brinkmanship, Washington’s top trade negotiator on Thursday sought additional funding to support US President Donald Trump’s new trade wars, insisting the administration will not be held hostage by Beijing’s retaliatory tactics ahead of a high-stakes leaders’ summit next month.

With Trump set to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on May 14-15, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer used the agency’s budget hearing to draw a hard line: the US is doubling down on trade investigations and moving to shatter China’s global monopoly on critical minerals, even as he acknowledged that American farmers remain firmly in China’s crosshairs.

‘They always use our farmers as a target’

Addressing the recurring “squeeze” on the American heartland, Greer refused to blink. He admitted that Beijing’s standard operating procedure is to punish US growers the moment Washington challenges what he described as China’s “unfair trading practices”.

“Any time we try to defend or take care of unfair trading practices, China tries to squeeze us, and they always use our farmers as a target,” Greer told lawmakers. “We don’t want them to be super dependent [on China].”

He resolutely added that China will retaliate, “but we’re going to deal with this. We’re not just going to lay down and let the Chinese have their way with the American economy.”

He added: “So we have to be able to reverse the script, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”