The U.S. agricultural industry is bracing for the potential of tens of billions of dollars in losses after China on Friday announced a 34 percent retaliatory tariff on imports from the United States.
China’s counterpunch to worldwide levies announced by the Trump administration this week will hit American farmers hard. China, which consumes 14 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports, took in more than $27 billion worth of those and related products last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is the third-largest importer of American farm goods, behind Mexico and Canada.
During the first Trump administration, a two-year trade war between the United States and China reduced U.S. agricultural exports to China by an estimated $25.7 billion. This time it could be even worse.
“If these tariffs go into effect for a significant period, we’re likely looking at a disruption that is likely to be severe, and likely worse than the 2018 trade war,” said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University.
Those disruptions, he added, are not limited to short-term monetary losses. “We saw acreage reductions, market share losses, and long-term structural shifts in global trade flows,” Dr. Ortega said.
The 34 percent tariff announced on Friday is in addition to existing tariffs, like the 10 to 15 percent rates that China imposed last month. The American Soybean Association noted in a statement that soybeans would face a 60 percent tariff in China starting next week, double what was levied in the 2018 trade war. The association estimates that American soybean farmers will lose $5.9 billion annually. Brazilian soybean farmers, who gained greater access to China during the 2018 trade war, will be the beneficiaries, the statement said.
“A.S.A. strongly encourages the administration to swiftly negotiate and address tariff and non-tariff barriers for U.S. agriculture exports,” the organization said.
China imported almost $13 billion worth of soybeans last year, along with more than $1 billion each worth of cotton, sorghum, beef, pork and seafood, according to the U.S.D.A.
Prices for almost all American agricultural products fell on the futures market Friday. Near-term contracts for most soy and cattle products were down more than 2.5 percent, and contracts for oats and lean hogs were down even more.
The shares of large publicly traded companies in the agricultural sectors also almost all fell. Archer Daniels Midland was down almost 9 percent, and Tyson Foods almost 6 percent. Shares of Intrepid Potash and Mosaic, agricultural chemical producers, were down around 10 percent.
China’s retaliatory tariffs, which are supposed to go into effect on Thursday, could be just the beginning of pain for the industry. American farmers already operate on slim margins, and the possibility of other retaliatory tariffs from the European Union and other major trading partners will make finding alternatives to China’s market challenging.
“We will lose more market share in China,” said Ian Sheldon, a professor of agricultural marketing, trade and policy at Ohio State University, “and the potential to divert that elsewhere in the world will be stymied by the fact that the tariffs implemented yesterday were so broad and across so many potential export markets.” He was referring to the global tariffs announced by President Trump on Wednesday.
“Farmers won’t just be losing market share,” Dr. Sheldon added. “Their revenue will fall because commodity prices will fall, and farmers are already facing a margin squeeze right now.”
In addition to the 34 percent tariff on U.S. goods, China’s General Administration of Customs said it would suspend poultry meat and bone meal imports from the facilities of five American poultry companies and sorghum imports from a sixth, because of what it said was the detection of bacteria or banned chemicals.
Most of the companies affected by the ban did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for one of them, Darling Ingredients, which converts little-used animal products into animal feed and fertilizer, said it had not before received any complaints about its products sent to China. The last shipment of poultry products from the suspended facility cleared China on Tuesday, she said.
The spokeswoman added that nearly all of the protein the company produced stayed within the United States, and that very little of it was exported to China.
The USA Poultry & Egg Export Council is waiting for more information about the import suspensions, a spokesman said. But the group estimates that the tariffs will reduce chicken exports to China by 59 percent, a projected loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.
