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Your Guide to Washington and the World’s 2024 US Election Means
The author is a Chicago-based contributor columnist
Steve Pitstick has farmed in the Midwest for about an hour outside Chicago, the city built by grain. Seven generations of his family make a living from the land.
Now, his farm like him in Illinois – the largest soybean exporting nation in the United States – is at the rough end of President Donald Trump’s US-China trade war. Illinois paid a big price in 2018 for Trump’s last trade war with China. At the time, the US lost $27 billion in agricultural exports in 2018-19 alone, with losses concentrated in the Midwest. Illinois alone lost $1.4 billion a year.
I caught up with the pit stick as I was rushing to get this year’s soy and corn crop to the ground at my son’s farm near Elburn, Illinois. Talking quickly so he can return to boxes moving around the farm by forklift, the 66-year-old tells me he’s not worried about the recent dramatic deterioration of trade relations with China, our top soybean exporter. And not the market, he says. “So far, the (soybean futures) market has proven that interest has actually been repeated since it began,” he says. “In the end, everything will be fine.”
Many people working in the agricultural sector believe there will be a trade agreement with China before the crops currently planted are harvested ©Patti Waldmeir/ft
Farmers are often optimistic, but this is more than just optimism. “I firmly believe that we are on the right track (with the tariffs),” Pitstick tells me. He gestures to nearby railway tracks and says that he carries “containers after junk containers” that our consumers mostly buy from China. “We need to send something out of this country to balance that trade, right?” he says, that’s what Trump is trying to do.
But why don’t he denounce the last trade war for dramatically boosting Brazil’s soybean exports at the expense of farms like him? Pitstick correctly points out that Brazil’s rise as an agricultural exporter began before Trump was elected. He believes it will continue with or without tariffs. “We are in unknown territory, and then we are always in unknown territory,” he says. He recalls that American agriculture has become worse and points out President Jimmy Carter’s 1980 US grain embargo to the Soviet Union.
Many Illinois farmers I interviewed last week seem to think they have a trade deal with China before the crops they currently plant are harvested, let alone the futures market. However, some are less optimistic than pit sticks. “When I last got the tariffs, I went to China for every three rows of soybeans (in the US), and today there’s only one in four,” Bill Wykes, former chairman of the Illinois Soybean Association, told me. “That’s a bit scary.”
Current Chairman Ron Kindred reflects his concerns. “I understand what the President is trying to achieve, but is this the best way to do that? He is trying to level the arena for us.
Illinois is the largest soybean exporter in the United States, and was hit hard by the trade war with China during Donald Trump’s first term © Patti Waldmeir/ft
“We have $10 soybeans now. But will we have $7 soybeans next year? That’s not something we can live with,” he says. Agricultural economists hope that Illinois corn and soybean farmers will lose money this year.
Certainly, the Trump administration has promised the help of farmers caught up in the trade war after spending much to rescue them last time. But according to Kindred, most farmers say they have a large vote for Republicans, are not used to government handouts and prefer to work for what they earn. Worse, he tells me that the trade war is destroying the US’s reputation as a trustworthy trading partner.
Current Chinese tariffs make soybeans less competitive. The American Soybean Association estimates China’s duties, customs duties and value-added tax. Currently, it is nearly 150% in total.
If that continues, will it hurt Trump’s substantial support among farmers? Pitstick says he’s not heading for the president any time soon. And a recent CBS News poll shows that 91% of Republicans are convinced he has a clear plan for trade.
“If China doesn’t buy ours, someone else will,” Illinois farmer John Anderman told me. For now, state farmers continue to focus on putting seeds into the ground. In Trump’s America, anything can happen at harvest.
