Agricultural Export Markets Stifled By Trade Wars
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Exports of some American agricultural products to key markets like China are a fraction of what they were just a few short years ago. Dr. Bill Ridley, an international economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says it starts with trade wars.
Ridley... "I don't think anybody's surprised to hear that Brazil has really come online in a major way as a big-time producer of, you know, key commodities like your soybeans, your cotton, your beef, etc, etc. And really what that has, you know, entailed is really dramatically expanded agricultural exports to China. So as the US has kind of locked itself out of the Chinese market through these trade war shenanigans, who has stepped in it has been Brazil. Brazil has stepped in a major way. And they're starting to eat our lunch in a lot of ways. You know, where once it was US soybeans going to the Chinese market, now it's Brazilian soybeans. And that's happening in conjunction with these trade disputes that the Trump administration has kicked off. And China has been kind of the biggest adversary in all of these. And we're seeing a repeat in a lot of ways. In the first US China trade war, China says, we're not gonna buy your commodities. We're not gonna buy your soybeans and your, and your pork and your sorghum, and all of this. So, you know, this kind of combination of global market dynamics that are really, you know, have, I think pretty dire implications for the US agricultural trade position."
Ridley said the trade tensions date back to 2018, which pushed China to boost domestic production and seek other soybean sources.
