Trump's trade deal with China is just another farm bailout

The last thing American farmers needed in 2018 was a trade war with China. Commodity prices had been falling since 2013, land values remained stagnant, and net cash income for farms was declining steadily, dropping 34% between 2012 and 2016.

By ensnaring the agricultural sector in a trade war that was supposed to be about intellectual property issues, the subsequent onslaught of tit-for-tat tariffs between Washington and Beijing, including Chinese retaliatory tariffs on virtually every U.S. farm product, made matters much worse. In the year preceding the trade war, U.S. farm exports to China totaled $19.5 billion. By the end of the following year, they had declined 53% to just $9.2 billion.