The following article by Jim Spencer was posted on the Star Tribune website June 22, 2018:
President Donald Trump touts his trade policy as long-overdue action to help America’s workers and industries, but some economists warn that tariffs he has placed or is threatening to place on China and Chinese retaliation to them could actually bolster other countries at the expense of the U.S.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the case of Minnesota’s vital agricultural staple, soybeans. The state ranks fourth in the country in all agricultural exports. Soybeans, as Worthington, Minn., farmer and American Soybean Association director Bill Gordon puts it, are the “golden egg,” accounting for 30 percent of the total. Minnesota’s farmers exported $2.1 billion worth of soybeans in 2016, according to government statistics. Most of them went to China.
If the Chinese proceed with a threatened 25 percent import tariff on U.S. soybeans in retaliation for 25 percent protective tariffs Trump placed on a variety of nonagricultural Chinese products, Minnesota soybean growers and others across the country face a loss of 69 percent of Chinese sales, said Purdue University agricultural economist Wallace Tyner, who analyzed data for the U.S. Soybean Export Council. Continue reading “Minnesota’s soybean sales could take big hit if China tariffs proceed”