- The global backlash to the Trump tariffs is punishing U.S. agriculture, especially with a decline in Chinese buying of U.S. farm products, farmers said.
- A leading agriculture exports group said “massive” financial losses are already racking up at farms, with cancelled orders resulting in layoffs, as China stops buying products from pork to lumber.
- “No one can replace all the volume that China buys,” one farm operator reported.
The clock is ticking on
trade deals that the U.S. will need to strike with many nations, most notably China, to avoid what President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has described as
an unsustainable tariff war. But in the U.S. farming sector, the damage has already been done and the economic crisis already begun.
U.S. agriculture exporters say
the global backlash to Trump’s tariffs is punishing them, especially through a decline in Chinese buying of U.S. farm products, leading to canceled export orders and layoffs.
Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, or AgTC, a leading export trade group for farmers, told CNBC the number of canceled purchases of U.S. agricultural products should not be described as approaching a crisis. “It is a full-blown crisis already,” he said.
Data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday revealed China made its biggest cancellation of pork orders since 2020, halting a shipment of 12,000 tons of pork.
AgTC said “massive” financial losses are already being felt by its members as a result of the trade war, based on reports it is receiving from member companies.
A wood pulp and paperboard exporter reported to the trade group the immediate cancellation or hold of 6,400 metric tons in a warehouse and a hold of 15 railcars sitting in what is known in the supply chain as “demurrage,” when fees are charged for delayed movement of goods.
Meanwhile, the exporter said, 9,000 metric tons of the product are on the water to China, expected to arrive May 13 and facing the threat of costly diversion to Chinese bonded warehouses or to other countries, as Chinese buyers may refuse the cargo and abandon it at port.
One grass seed exporter told AgTC it received two weeks’ notice that eight loads were being canceled by Chinese customers despite vessels already being booked.
www.telegraph.co.uk
