Trade Wars Won’t Make American Farming Great Again
The US trade war will hurt food exports and increase the agricultural trade deficit.
The Trump administration’s trade wars will hurt US exports of foodstuffs including wheat.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Across the US grain belt, the vast majority voted for President Donald Trump last year, embracing his “Make America Great Again” slogan even more enthusiastically than other demographic groups did1. Yet, there isn’t anything great about the American farming industry — and Trump is to blame for a lot of its recent decline.
The deterioration is clear on many measures, but one stands out. For decades, the US exported more foodstuff than it imported. It was, to borrow the slogan of one of the country’s top commodity traders, a “supermarket to the world.” Not anymore.