What happened to U.S. farmers during the last trade war

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The U.S. exports billions of dollars worth of agricultural products each year — things like soybeans, corn and pork. And over the last month, these exports have been caught up in a trade war.

U.S. farmers have been collateral damage in a trade war before. In 2018, President Trump put tariffs on a bunch of Chinese products including flatscreen TVs, medical devices and batteries. But China matched those tariffs with their own retaliatory tariffs. They put tariffs on a lot of U.S. agricultural products they'd been buying, like soybeans, sorghum, and livestock. That choice looked strategic. Hitting these products with tariffs hurt Trump's voter base and might help China in a negotiation. And in some cases, China could find affordable alternative options from other countries.

Today on the show: what happened in 2018, how the government prevented some U.S. farms from going bankrupt, and what was lost even after the trade war ended.

This episode was produced by Sylvie Douglis and edited by Jess Jiang. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:05.5	Every time I've called up LeVon and Craig Refune,
0:08.7	they've been busy with grandparent chores.
0:12.0	Well, we have two babies today.
0:13.7	A two-year-old and a one-year-old.
0:15.6	Oh, my gosh.
0:16.6	Are you guys Iowa's best grandparents?
0:18.7	I don't think so.
0:20.3	The tiredest ones, probably.
0:23.7	A little over a week ago on May 5th, Levant and Craig were babysitting two of their six granddaughters.
0:29.5	My gardens right by our chicken pan, and I just park the girls in their stroller,
0:34.8	and they will watch chickens for an hour while I garden.
0:38.5	It's pretty repetitious, but they watch them.
0:42.5	Levan and Craig are farmers.
0:45.1	Craig is the fifth generation to live on this family farm.
0:48.4	It's pretty big, 1,100 plus acres just north of Des Moines and Iowa.
0:52.6	And in addition to raising chickens, they have pigs and
0:56.0	sheep and turkeys and also something called limousine cattle. It's a French breed of cattle.
1:02.6	They come from France. And they're very lean. They have expensive tastes. They taste expensive.
1:17.5	But livestock farming is not what brings home the bacon, if you will.
1:21.0	Yeah, the majority of our income comes from corn and soybeans.
1:26.7	LeVon and Craig sell their corn and soybeans to a food processor. That processor exports to international buyers.
	...

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