“We’re struggling. Margins have been extremely tight for well over a year,” Tenneger says, sitting in the
dining area of the pork tent at the Iowa State Fair. He said farmers are losing around $8 a head per pig, or
around 6 per cent.
Near Tenneger, a line stretches around the perimeter and into the fairway of the sprawling fairgrounds.
Inside a fence stood massive grills, where presidential candidates hoping to unseat Trump stop by to flip
some meat – with cameras flashing, of course.
The Iowa farmer’s mind is elsewhere, however – in Washington, where a president known to turn markets
on their heads through tweets seemingly sent at a whim; and in China, where a devastating outbreak of the
African swine flu has been roiling pork markets for at least a year.
When the African swine flu first broke out about a year ago, pork producers in Iowa – not to mention
futures traders – were optimistic they might be able to capitalise on the demand in China for imported pork,
as their swine populations were decimated. But, with Trump’s trade war leading the Chinese government to
impose a 62 per cent levy on US pork, that opening appears to have evaporated.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that even when something happens, they’re not going to react near as much as
they could,” Tenneger says of the markets, after describing a surge as the flu raged through Asia, and one
that has dropped and become sceptical as the trade war has dragged on.
Since Trump first began ramping up the trade war with China in 2017, US farmers and producers have faced
a tumultuous near- and long-term outlook for their business, even as the president has claimed his efforts
have been a boon for the United States with a positive impact for both farmers and American consumers.
Meanwhile, analysts attempting to get a comprehensive picture of the impact of the escalating trade war
have said that there are signs of concern. Contrary to Trump’s claim that the impact on American
consumers is “virtually none” so far, the increased tariffs on imported goods and agricultural products has
been been almost entirely paid for by US consumers, according to researchers at Princeton University.
Trump calls a spade a spade. If he says, ‘this is how I’m gonna do it’, he does it. I don’t see him waffling on
stuff. So I really appreciate that
There are other signs of alarm. Just this week, for instance, the yield curve for US government bonds
inverted for the first time since 2007 – a signal that came before all of the past seven US recessions.
Meanwhile, Trump has maintained that farmers aren’t being hurt by his trade war, in an apparent nod to the
massive payouts made to offset the damage, even as his administration limited this week the scope of
supplies impacted by US tariffs.
“Through massive devaluation of their currency and pumping vast sums of money into their system, the
tens of billions of dollars that the US is receiving is a gift from China,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “Prices
not up, no inflation. Farmers getting more than China would be spending. Fake News won’t report!”
But it’s the uncertainty from his tweets that has been a major source of stress for Leon Sheets, a pig farmer
in northeast Iowa, who also farms some 600 acres of row crop including corn and soybeans.
Sheets said his overall view is to keep working and do his best, because he knows he has little control over
the tariffs and trade war being run through Washington. Plus, he lives his life with the philosophy – as does
Tenneger – that the president is an individual that Americans should support, regardless of differences in
opinion about correct policy.