confederates never learn a goddamn thing
Oct. 1st, 2025 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdIf anyone’s wondering whether US farmers exporting to China just need a little “temporary help” to get over Trump’s trade war, read this thread from farmer Sarah Taber on Mastodon. She’s a farmer from North Carolina and deeply involved in farming issues. Read all of the thread.
If you won’t, though – if know your US Civil War history, you might know about how the Confederacy self-embargoed cotton exports, withholding “King Cotton” from the market.
They thought it would grind textiles production in the UK to a halt and force the UK to come in on their side of the war.
What happened instead was Egyptian cotton.
Trump pulled his bullshit thinking China would bow to him over soybeans; what happened instead was Brazil and Argentina. They haven’t bought a single goddamn US soybean since last spring, as South America ramped production right the fuck up.
Soybeans were the US’s largest agricultural export.
Emphasis on were.
And arguably, it gets worse from there.
So seriously, go read the thread. It’s good, knowledgable shit.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 06:55 pm (UTC)China had other suppliers already. The US soybean-marketing lobby spent *years* carefully persuading China to buy from us. It took something like a decade to convince them we could produce good-enough quality, high-enough protein content, consistently, at acceptable prices.
All that work went down the drain this year. We failed to come through (by decision! not by natural disasters!) just a few years after persuading China to take a chance on us.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 07:20 pm (UTC)But in addition to that, Brazil and Argentina saw what was coming (particularly after the previous time Trump did this) and ramped up expecting, well.
And now it's all fucked for a decade or two.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 10:34 pm (UTC)Of course, since China is signing long-term trade agreements with Canadian potash exporters, the US will have to find another source of potassium if the trade barriers are dropped.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 10:33 pm (UTC)You can only force more favorable terms from a trading partner to the extent that you have leverage. Leverage means either you have something of value you can offer them, or you can take something of value away from them. The "take away" stratagem only lasts until there's a substitute for your goods. And when those goods are basic agricultural commodities like soybeans-- already grown in many countries around the world-- it's easy for a buyer to find an alternate source.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-02 12:55 am (UTC)