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Beginning Wednesday, shipments arriving in the United States from China and Hong Kong worth less than $800 could face 54 percent tariffs.
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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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Don't get used to the decline in the U.S. rate of inflation to a four-year low. Inflation will probably rise, at least temporarily, even after the Trump administration reduced high tariffs.
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A 90-day pause on punishing tariffs could restart trade between the world's largest economies. But it is not enough to resolve uncertainty about the economy.
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"Bullying" leads to isolation, Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned, after the Trump administration rolled back many tariffs.
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