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The ramifications of the trade dispute continue to take their toll on U.S. farmers

Jacqui Fatka, Policy editor

July 11, 2019

1 Min Read
Images of Chinese and U.S. money
Dilok Klaisataporn/Getty Images

U.S. agricultural exports to China represented 5% of U.S. cash receipts in 2017. China represents one of our best opportunities for major export growth in the near- and long-term future. But the ramifications of the trade dispute continue to take their toll on U.S. farmers.

At the end of June, President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping called a truce on increasing tariffs on the remainder of Chinese exports, but the previous instituted tariffs will continue. Trump again promised China would begin buying “large amounts” of U.S. ag products as part of the latest discussions.

It does not appear a solution is imminent. Chad Hart, Iowa State University ag economist, says negotiators are a “long, long way to having a formal agreement,” and anything with China will be nothing like the North American trade agreement or Korea agreement.

“To me, the best thing to come would be an agreement to reverse tariffs currently being erected and build towards some kind of trade agreement somewhere down the line,” Hart says. “Even when working with countries we get along with famously [Canada and Mexico], it took 14 years. China is a vastly different country and mindset in how they approach things. You’re not going to strike a deal much quicker with a country with that different starting point.

“Tariffs can be reversed on a course of a tweet. Trade agreements take years, if not decades, to build,” Hart explains.

U.S. China trade war graphic

About the Author(s)

Jacqui Fatka

Policy editor, Farm Futures

Jacqui Fatka grew up on a diversified livestock and grain farm in southwest Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications, with a minor in agriculture education, in 2003. She’s been writing for agricultural audiences ever since. In college, she interned with Wallaces Farmer and cultivated her love of ag policy during an internship with the Iowa Pork Producers Association, working in Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Capitol Hill press office. In 2003, she started full time for Farm Progress companies’ state and regional publications as the e-content editor, and became Farm Futures’ policy editor in 2004. A few years later, she began covering grain and biofuels markets for the weekly newspaper Feedstuffs. As the current policy editor for Farm Progress, she covers the ongoing developments in ag policy, trade, regulations and court rulings. Fatka also serves as the interim executive secretary-treasurer for the North American Agricultural Journalists. She lives on a small acreage in central Ohio with her husband and three children.

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