What an Iowa Farmer Fears About the Trade War

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the increasingly bitter trade war between the United States and China, perhaps nobody has more at stake than America’s soybean farmers, whose crop has become the country’s single biggest export to China. Michael Barbaro speaks to an Iowa farmer who helped build that $13 billion market, and asks her what President Trump’s sky-high tariffs mean for her and for tens of thousands of other American farmers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello.
0:01.0	It must be Jessica.
0:02.0	Yes, it must be April.
0:03.0	Yes, it must be April.
0:06.0	Yes, nice to meet you.
0:08.0	You too.
0:09.0	So do you want a tour of the Empire first?
0:11.0	Yes, I would love.
0:13.0	A few days ago, daily producer Jessica Chung traveled to Iowa to meet with a farmer.
0:30.5	So this is from way up there where you see those poles to down there, there's a creek down there.
0:31.7	This is all... This is all you.
0:32.7	Yeah, one of my fields.
0:34.6	It was a cornfield last year, and then I will just go in and plant it in soybeans.
0:40.3	And it's amazing to look at this now and then come back in August and they'll be, if weather
0:47.9	permitting, they'll be waste high. So. And what will the crop look like? Green, leafy, you know, waves. Waves. Waves of green soybeans, yes.
1:00.3	But for me here in Iowa, it's usually April is go time. That's planting season. So right now, I want to get these soybeans in the ground. I want to plant, and we want to plan.
1:13.4	The thing about the tariffs, it's hard to plan when they're out there looming.
1:17.5	You know, what's going to happen?
1:22.1	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarrow.
1:24.9	This is the Daily.
1:31.0	Thank you. I'm Michael Bobarro. This is the Daily. In the increasingly bitter trade war between the United States and China, perhaps nobody
1:37.7	has more at stake than America's soybean farmers, whose crop has become the country's single biggest export to China.
	...

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