US agriculture exporters fear trade war 2.0 will hurt sales to China

Sector is bracing itself for retaliation should Trump follow through on his tariff threats

- Joyce ZK Lim

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 itself for a fresh round of economic pain, should Trump 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 more than 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.