Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Overview of trade war impact on U.S. soybean and pork farmers suggests long-term shift in global markets

Keith Good of Farm Policy News at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has aggregated an excellent collection of news articles examining and explaining the impact of the trade war on U.S. pork and soy farmers. It's well-worth your time to read.

For example, one recent Wall Street Journal article notes that China, which has the "world's biggest appetite for pork," is buying far less pork from the U.S. after tariffs raised prices as much as 70 percent. And because an outbreak of African swine fever in China has increased domestic demand for pork, China has increasingly been looking to pork producers in Europe and South America. "Those companies aim to turn that opportunity into long-term business," Jacob Bunge and Lucy Craymer report. "The shift raises the prospect of not just a short-term hiccup for American hog farmers, but a fundamental realignment in the global supply chain in one of the world’s hungriest markets."

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