President Donald Trump's trade policies have set up American farmers for an impending disaster, as China refuses to buy soybeans from the United States.
According to The New York Times, the move by the Chinese government to halt U.S. soybean imports "has had devastating repercussions for farmers in North Dakota, which exported more than 70 percent of its soybeans to China before Trump unveiled the new tariffs this year. Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers that depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States."
China usually consumes around half of the U.S. annual soybean harvest, and 70 percent of the harvest from North Dakota. The uncertainty has caused many farmers to fear a repeat of the 1980s farm crisis, a massive agricultural recession triggered by high interest rates, falling crop prices, and land value changes. That recession led to a huge wave of farm bankruptcies across the Midwest.
“The stress level is much higher now than it was then,” 44-year-old Jordan Gackle, who co-owns a 76-year-old soybean farm near Kulm, told The Times. “If we keep this going for very long, then we are going to see the kind of foreclosures that were happening.” He continued, “All of it is unnecessary. The U.S. was not forced into this by anybody.”
His brother Josh, who chairs the American Soybean Association, said, “The input costs for fertilizer, chemicals, cost of land, cost of equipment, all of those things are increasing. And the price of the commodity is decreasing.”
Justin Sherlock, a 37-year-old farmer in Dazey, had a more blunt assessment: “I feel like we’re out of time.”
Adding to the stakes, Trump's own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has financial interests in the region as he tries to negotiate a trade solution with China: "The Treasury Secretary owns thousands of acres of North Dakota farmland, worth up to $25 million. The properties grow soybeans and corn in a state that exports most of its agricultural products to China. The investments have earned Mr. Bessent as much as $1 million in rental income annually, according to his financial disclosure filings."
Nonetheless, the report noted, Bessent has many other sources of income, which is not the case for many of the struggling farmers in the area.
