Should Farmers Fear Trump?
Protectionism can mean famine, even war.
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Kirk Liefer is readying his soybeans for shipment down southern Illinois’s Kaskaskia River. The Kaskaskia feeds into the Mississippi, which, to a great extent, feeds China: About one-quarter of the U.S. crop goes straight to the world’s biggest food market, where it gets eaten by half the planet’s pigs and provides cooking oil for a rapidly growing middle class.
“Our soybeans go to China, a lot of the corn goes to Japan or Mexico,” says Liefer, 39. “Almost everything that’s a bulk crop goes overseas. You take that away, you ripple through the entire region.”