Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue met with members of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives earlier this week. He told their executives to talk to Congress about voting on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement on trade. Noting that he can’t directly encourage lobbying, Perdue told members they should follow their “hearts and minds” in talking with Congress.

Perdue told the executives in attendance that he’s very positive about the role of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, saying she’s “taking her deliberations on the USMCA very seriously.” He says there are some tweaks that are “doable” to satisfy Democrats who are critical of the bill. He covered a wide variety of topics, including the Market Facilitation Program.

He says details should be coming shortly, noting that the USDA has been “opaque” about the details because the administration didn’t want the aid program to influence planting decisions. As the planting season is all but wrapped up, it’ll be much more time appropriate to release more detailed information.

The World Trade Organization has been receiving complaints about the aid money that U.S. farmers are getting from the government. However, Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue says he’s not concerned that the payments will be a problem. “We had to design a program very carefully to make sure we do not violate the WTO limit,” he said to reporters in Washington. “We feel like we’re safely within those confines and we’re prepared to defend that should anyone challenge it.”

China, India, the European Union, Ukraine, and Australia have all fired off criticism at the USDA’s two aid packages for farmers that could total up to $28 billion in assistance designed to counteract retaliatory tariffs implemented on U.S. farm goods. Australia calls the aid a “dangerous precedent” that could distort world markets. China says they appreciate that the U.S. respects the interest of its farmers.

“We would appreciate it if the U.S. can also respect the WTO rules,” China says. An Agri-Pulse report says several member countries in the WTO are fearful that the U.S. will give its farmers a third trade assistance package next year, which Perdue says he won’t rule out.

The U.S. and China have agreed to forgo the next round of tariffs that President Trump threatened to impose on $300 billion in Chinese goods. That report comes from both Politico and the South China Morning Post. It comes ahead of a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this weekend at the G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan.

One source tells the South China Morning Post that Trump’s decision to temporarily halt raising tariffs on more Chinese goods was President Xi’s price for agreeing to meet with him in Japan. It’s well known that agriculture has been one of the hardest-hit economic sectors by Trump’s trade dispute with China. Other countries have responded to American tariffs on imports by trying to exert pressure on a big part of the electorate that ultimately helped Trump win the presidency.

Also on the trade front, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer made a pre-Japan visit down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., this week to get some more face time with House Democrats before heading overseas for the G-20 gathering. Trump’s trade boss left Democrats feeling more optimistic about getting their concerns with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement resolved

The incentives that companies use to help develop new antibiotics for food animals are coming under pressure. A USDA research economist says those incentives are being pressured by high development costs, changing markets, and shifting consumer trends.

The trade industry website Meating Place Dot Com says sales in antibiotics in both the U.S. and Europe are dropping, and incentives for companies that manufacture new branded or generic products are slipping as well. Those pharma companies have to cope with research-and-development costs that could run for 10 years from the first idea to market.

The companies also have to contend with regulations that ban the use of medically important antibiotics which are used to treat humans. They also have to respond to growing consumer demand for food from animals that haven’t been treated with antibiotics. It’s becoming more expensive for companies to develop alternatives, even if it’s reforming earlier antibiotics.

Livestock farmers who can’t use antibiotics to treat their animals are in for slower animal growth rates, a higher cull rate, and even could be affected by growing ineffectiveness of the current drugs. Industry experts say government regulators want to see non-medically important antibiotics developed for animals to treat bacterial infections once they appear.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC that the U.S. and China are getting much closer to a trade deal than people realize. He’s also optimistic that progress will be made when Presidents Trump and Xi meet face-to-face this weekend at the G-20 in Osaka, Japan. “We’re about 90 percent of the way there and I think there’s a definite path forward to completing this,” he said on CNBC.

Mnuchin also says he’s confident that Trump and Xi will make additional progress in the stalled trade talks. “The message we want to hear is that they want to come back to the table and continue,” he says. “I think there’s a good outcome for their economy and the U.S. economy to get balanced trade and continue to build on the relationship between the two countries.” What he didn’t provide to CNBC was additional details on what the final 10 percent of the agreement entails, or what some of the more important sticking points still are.

The outcome of Saturday’s meeting is very important to the global economy and financial markets, which have been shaken up by the 1.5-year trade dispute between the economic giants. A survey of investors says they don’t expect a deal this weekend, but they don’t expect any new tariffs either.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Saturday on the sidelines of the G-20 political summit in Osaka, Japan. Politico says both leaders are under mounting economic and political pressure to end their trade war. It’s a high-stakes meeting that may or may not mark a turning point in the negotiations after talks slammed to a halt back in May.

Each side’s top trade official got things going with a phone call this week. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He spoke on the phone on Monday. Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are expected to get together with their Beijing counterparts before Trump and Xi go face-to-face on this weekend. Trump’s trade war is taking a huge toll on U.S. farmers and causing major uncertainty for American businesses.

Financial conditions in agriculture have gotten much worse, with that weakness starting to show up in lending data and threatening the broader rural economy. Xi faces economic growth in China that’s lagging, food prices are soaring, and his administration could take a hard knock if Trump follows through on his latest tariff threat.

The agriculture sector is suffering from working capital that’s fallen to critically low levels. That news is from the forecasting firm Agricultural Economic Insights. The firm recently analyzed data put out by the Economic Research Service, saying the declines in working capital are stark.

Brent Gloy, a Nebraska farmer and economist, writes that “Working capital is projected to fall by 25 percent from last year to this year. This is right on the heels of a 30 percent decline from 2017 through 2018.” Gloy says the current level of working capital amounts to just 31 percent of what was available back in 2014. It’s only 23 percent of the working capital that was available in 2012.

Gloy says, “The Market Facilitation Payments are large enough to actively move the needle on financial conditions in the Ag sector. However, they will clearly not rebuild working capital to levels that are necessary to give long-term financial stability to the American agricultural sector.” Gloy also says the declines in the farm sector’s working capital are substantial and should cause some serious concerns about the financial health of the farm sector.