What do farmers do in a trade war?

The whole family is in the agriculture business. What is it about farming that you like?

Other challenges, though, are more man made, like a trade war with China. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma.

Today on the show, Anthony and another soybean farmer tell us how they're feeling about a trade war that targets their biggest customer. The thing about growing crops for a living is is so much depends on the weather. Brad Smith knows this firsthand.

I know you said that, like, schedule is weather dependent. So have you already kind of like been outside today and.

But Brad lives in Milledgeville, Illinois. And when the weather is not cold and crappy, he's out in the field growing corn and soybeans.

Then trade tensions escalated. China retaliated with tariffs on US agricultural products, including soybeans. And then as the US and China went back and forth raising tariffs again and again, China's tariffs on U.S. imports have gotten to at least 125%.

And from China's perspective, this is the strategy to hit the US where it hurts. After all, the US's most valuable export to China in terms of goods is not blue jeans or bourbon. Any guesses?

No, in fact, it is the humble soybean.

Last year over 50% of US soybean exports were bound for China where they were used for animal feed and cooking oil and to make things like tofu. But this year, because of the trade war, things are not looking good.

You know, one of the things that Trump has said about his tariffs is that there will be short term pain, but long term gain and that jobs and manufacturing will come back to the United States as a result. But for now I mean, does it feel like that farmers are sort of being asked to take one for the team?

And in fact, US Soybean growers still haven't recovered the business they lost during that last trade war when China started buying more of its soybeans from Brazil.

So you can hear that. While Brad was a little hopeful that the medicine will work, Anthony is a lot more skeptical about the Trump administration's promises. But for both of them, the biggest challenge right now seems to be how the trade war is creating all this uncertainty for their businesses, not only from the loss of revenue, but also increased costs.

As of today, a truce in this trade war seems pretty far away. On Friday, Chinese officials said they would consider beginning trade talks with the US if it showed, quote, sincerity and it cancels tariffs on its goods. When Trump was asked about this statement on an NBC interview, he said he wouldn't cancel the tariffs, but he would lower them. Quote, at some point tomorrow, we'll be

This episode was produced by Angel Carreras and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Cake and Cannon edits the show and the indicators of production of npr.