U.S.–China Trade Dispute and Potential Impacts on Agriculture

The United States and China, the world’s largest economic powers, have dueled in an escalating trade dispute since January 2018. This ever-changing story continues to evolve, with additional tariffs announced by the United States as we go to press in late May 2018. Given this recent dispute that has moved agriculture from the back pages to the front pages of media, Choices publishes this special issue on “U.S.-China Trade Dispute and Potential Impacts on Agriculture.” This trade dispute is important to U.S. agriculture, because China has been the United States’ top agricultural export market outside of North America since 2009 with an annual sale of nearly $20 billion in 2017 (USDA, 2018b). In 2017, top U.S. agricultural exports to China included soybeans, cotton, hides and skins for leather products, fish, dairy, sorghum, wheat, nuts and pork (USDA, 2018a). Noting the theory of comparative advantage and that China has one-fifth of the world’s population—four times that of the United States—but only one-tenth of the world’s arable land, China primarily exports labor-intensive manufactured products to the United States (e.g., electronics), and the United States primarily exports land-intensive agricultural commodities to China (e.g., soybeans). While the United States has a large trade deficit with China, it has a trade surplus in agricultural products.