SHANGHAI – Mr Manuel Garibay travelled from the American north-west to Shanghai in early November, hoping to sell dried cherries to Chinese consumers.
But even in an exhibition hall filled with prospective buyers at China’s largest import expo, he worried that the lucrative market – which makes up a fifth of his company’s profits – might soon grow harder to reach.
As the spectre of a renewed trade war looms under a second Donald Trump presidency, the sales manager at Royal Ridge Fruits, a Washington state cherry grower, expects Beijing to retaliate with levies of its own “to agriculture, and to us”.
“I think if tariffs are imposed, it could potentially kill all our Chinese business,” he told The Straits Times on Nov 6, shortly before Trump won the US presidential election.
The American agri-food industry is bracing for a fresh round of economic pain, should he up the ante in a trade war that has already hit it hard.
Heavily exposed to the Chinese market and seen to form part of Trump’s support base, the farm sector has been a handy target for Beijing to retaliate against US tariffs.
When Trump slapped levies of up to 25 per cent on a range of Chinese goods in 2018, China responded with tit-for-tat duties on US products including soya beans, pork and fruit.
American farmers lost over US$27 billion (S$36 billion) in exports from mid-2018 to 2019 – mostly from China, the US agriculture department estimated.
A de-escalatory deal known as the Phase One agreement was later inked in 2020 during the Trump administration, and Beijing granted some tariff waivers to support farm purchases.
This time, the President-elect has said that he would impose taxes of 60 per cent or more on Chinese imports.
“US soybeans and corn are prime targets for tariffs,” wrote economists from the American Soybean Association and National Corn Growers Association in October.
A study commissioned by both associations and released that month projected that their farmers could lose as much as US$7.3 billion combined in annual production value over the next decade, if China responds with 60 per cent tariffs.
“The soybeans, the beef, the chicken – they’re going to hurt,” said American whiskey exporter Daniel Benefield of Rad Beverage International, on the sidelines of the Shanghai import fair.
He believes that his industry will be spared as Chinese imports of American spirits are low, but that Beijing would “hit” agriculture given the large volumes traded.
China is the US’ largest overseas market for agricultural products. The sector accounted for a fifth of total US exports of goods to China in 2023.