American soybean farmers have seen a significant decrease in demand from China, prompting them to seek new markets amid escalating tensions in the U.S.-China trade war.
U.S. farmers have been seriously affected by the ongoing trade war in which both sides have imposed tariffs on each other’s products, shaking global markets. As a result, soybean growers have suffered greatly with total shipments to the Asian economic giant expected to end this marketing year some two-thirds lower, CNBC informs, citing the chief executive officer of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, Jim Sutter.
“This year our exports to China look like they’ll be a third of what they had been in the last few years, so instead of being 30 million tons like they were last year, it looks like they’ll be around 10 (millions tons) this year…That’s a huge difference,” Sutter told CNBC at the S.E. Asia U.S Agriculture Co‐operators Conference in Singapore.
As the world’s largest soybeans consumer, China accounted for 60% of U.S. soybean exports prior to the beginning of the trade war. The country announced Tuesday that it would pull out of U.S. agriculture, dealing another blow in the escalating trade conflict.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said through a spokesperson that the country will no longer buy U.S. agricultural products in response to President Donald Trump’s recently announced 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods.
Soybean farmers have now turned to Europe, emerging regions in Southeast Asia, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Sutter noted. But the exports to these markets are unlikely to make up for the losses in China and farmers will almost certainly end up with a record high level of ending stocks of over 1 billion bushels in this marketing year, ending on August 31.
CNBC also writes that despite the blows to U.S. agriculture, American farmers still support the President, saying in a recent poll that they believe the trade war will eventually end in their benefit; a record-high 78% said so.
Be the first to comment