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The U.S.-China trade war: Is food China's most powerful weapon?

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 The U.S.-China Trade War: Is Food China's Most Powerful
Weapon?
Zhang Hongzhou

Asia Policy, Volume 15, Number 3, July 2020, pp. 59-86 (Article)

Published by National Bureau of Asian Research

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/762295

[ Access provided at 15 Aug 2020 10:01 GMT from National University of Singapore ]
 asia policy, volume 15, number 3 ( july 2020 ) , 59–86
• http://asiapolicy.nbr.org •

The U.S.-China Trade War:

Is Food China’s Most Powerful Weapon?

Zhang Hongzhou

zhang hongzhou is a Research Fellow with the China Programme in

the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological
University and a PhD candidate with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public
Policy at National University of Singapore (Singapore). He can be reached
at <ishzzhang@ntu.edu.sg>.

keywords: 
u.s.-china trade war; food power; food security;
strategic rivalry
© The National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle, Washington
 asia policy

executive summary

This article examines the concept of “food power,” analyzes China’s use of
food as a foreign policy instrument against the U.S. in the context of their
trade war, and considers the potential implications.

main argument
The food power balance between the U.S. and China is affected by four key
factors: scarcity, the concentration of supply, the degree of demand dispersion,
and action independence. Since emerging as the leading food importer,
China has successfully tipped the food power balance in its favor through
overseas agricultural investment, import diversification, and cultivation of
its own global agribusiness. In addition, the global food glut and the critical
importance of rural support for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign further
increase China’s leverage in bilateral food trade. With this newly gained food
power, the Chinese government, which used to be a victim of U.S. food
embargoes, has started using food as a foreign policy instrument to influence
U.S. policy amid the ongoing trade war. While China appears to have achieved
limited success against the Trump administration through food power, the
potential costs to both China and the world of weaponizing food trade could
be huge.

policy implications
• While it is understandable that China seeks to leverage its newly gained
food power against the U.S., serious caution must be exercised. There
are severe liabilities for the global economy and adverse effects for both
countries when food is weaponized.
• So long as the food relationship is relatively symmetrical, the political
leverage that food provides China against the U.S. is ephemeral because the
balance of food power could easily be tipped in either direction.
• Given China’s increasing dependence on the global market for its food
supply, a stable and flourishing food trade system will be critical to the
country’s overall food security. This means that attempts by China to use
food as a foreign policy instrument are ultimately counterproductive.
 zhang • the u.s.-china trade war

T he trade war between the United States and China came to a tentative
truce with the signing of the phase-one agreement on January 15, 2020,
between U.S. president Donald Trump and Chinese vice premier Liu He.
Although the standoff officially started in July 2018, tensions had escalated in
early 2018 when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on solar panels,
washing machines, steel, and aluminum. While the initial tariffs were applied
to various countries, Trump began to target China with tariffs on around
$50 billion worth of Chinese imports in March 2018, in addition to new
investment restrictions and legal action against China through the World
Trade Organization.1 Eventually, in July 2018 the Trump administration
imposed sweeping tariffs on China for its alleged unfair trade practices.
After attempts to de-escalate the trade tensions failed, China retaliated.2
Among the retaliatory measures, tariffs on U.S. food products were top on
the list.3 Amid the ongoing trade war, food has become “weaponized” and
used as a foreign policy instrument by Beijing against the United States. Many
commentators and experts from both the United States and China assert that
food, and soybeans in particular, has been China’s most powerful weapon in
the trade war.4
To be sure, food has long been used as a means of persuasion, coercion,
or behavior control.5 Withholding food during times of conflict can be a
powerful weapon and become part of a military strategy.6 It is not rare for the
food-surplus country or exporter to control food supplies, primarily in the
form of aid or an embargo, to influence the policies of other countries. For
instance, since the end of World War II, the United States—the world’s largest

1 David Lawder and Jeff Mason, “Trump Sets Steel and Aluminum Tariffs but Exempts Canada,
Mexico,” Reuters, March 9, 2018 u https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-usa-trade/
china-says-it-will-make-necessary-response-in-event-of-trade-war-idUSKCN1GK09C.
2 Emily Feng, Xinning Liu, and Tom Mitchell, “China Looks to Avoid U.S. Trade War as
Trump Steps up Rhetoric,” Financial Times, March 4, 2018 u https://www.ft.com/content/
db0106f8-1f7f-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2c11.
3 Daniel W. Drezner, “Economic Statecraft in the Age of Trump,” Washington Quarterly 42, no. 3
(July 3, 2019): 7–24 u https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1663072.
4 Ian Sheldon, “How Soybeans Became China’s Most Powerful Weapon in Trump’s Trade War,”
The Conversation, accessed May 21, 2020 u http://theconversation.com/how-soybeans-became-
chinas-most-powerful-weapon-in-trumps-trade-war-118088; “China’s Best Weapon in a Trade
War With Trump May Backfire,” Bloomberg, February 13, 2018 u https://www.bloomberg.com/
news/articles/2018-02-13/china-s-strongest-weapon-in-a-trade-war-with-trump-may-backfire; and
“Fanji! Zhongguo weishenme haimeiyou dui Meiguo shichu zhege shashoujian?” [Retaliate! Why
China Has Not Used This “Killer Weapon” against the United States?], Chinanews, March 4, 2018
u http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2018/04-03/8482079.shtml.

5 Joseph McAuley, “Food as a Power Tool,” America Magazine, August 13, 2015 u https://www.
americamagazine.org/content/all-things/some-food-thought-ii-when-food-weapon.
6 Gesine Gerhard, “Food as a Weapon,” Food, Culture & Society 14, no. 3 (2011): 335–51 u https://doi.
org/10.2752/175174411X12961586033528.

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food exporter—has attempted to influence the policies of other countries by

controlling food supplies.7 In fact, during the Cold War, China was among the
victims of the United States’ “food weaponization.” However, the tide appears
to have turned. China, which is currently the largest importer of agricultural
products in the world and faces mounting challenges to feed its increasingly
affluent population, has been using food as a foreign policy instrument to
shape U.S. foreign policy, particularly in its trade policy toward China.
Through revisiting the concept of food power, this article examines the use
and potential implications of food as a foreign policy instrument in the context
of the China-U.S. trade war. I argue that the balance in food power between
the two countries is affected by four key factors: scarcity, the concentration
of supply, the degree of demand dispersion, and the independence of action.
As one of the world’s leading food importers, China has successfully tipped
the power balance in its favor through various measures, such as overseas
agricultural investment, diversification of imports, and cultivation of its
own global agribusiness. In addition, the global food glut and the critical
importance of rural support to Trump’s re-election campaign further increase
China’s leverage in bilateral food trade. With its newly gained food power,
China has started using food as a foreign policy instrument to influence
Trump’s China policy amid the ongoing trade war. Yet even as China appears
to have achieved limited success against the Trump administration through
food power, the potential costs to China and the world of weaponizing food
trade could be huge.
This article is arranged as follows:
u pp. 63–68 define food power, discuss four conditions for its effective use,
and review past U.S. attempts to deploy food power as a foreign policy
tool.
u pp. 68–75 assess the food power balance between the United States and
China, with a particular focus on the relative decline of U.S. food power
and China’s efforts to tip the balance in its favor.
u pp. 75–84 give a comprehensive account of how China has deployed its
newly gained food power against the United States during the current
trade war.
u pp. 84–86 offer a short conclusion.

7 Robert L. Paarlberg, Food Trade and Foreign Policy: India, the Soviet Union and the United States
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); and Peter Wallensteen, “Scarce Goods as Political
Weapons: The Case of Food,” Journal of Peace Research 13, no. 4 (1976): 277–98.

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 zhang • the u.s.-china trade war

conceptual framework

Conditions of Food Power

Food power is defined as the ability of one nation to influence the policy
of another nation through the manipulation of global food transfers.8 This
definition excludes the transfer of food for solely monetary purposes, however
lucrative. Food power must enable the user to influence the behavior of other
nations.9 Since the end of World War II, the United States has been among
the most frequent users of food as a weapon, particularly during the Cold
War. In 1974, then secretary of agriculture Earl Butz announced that food
is a weapon, and that food power is even greater than petrol power. Inspired
by the use of oil as a foreign policy instrument by the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Butz was referring to the use of food
as a weapon to advance the United States’ strategic objectives: win friends,
punish enemies, and curb the spread of Communism. He was not the only
one who believed that the United States’ dominant position in the world grain
market could offer the country a powerful foreign policy instrument.10 For
instance, the CIA published a report in 1974 claiming that the food power
the United States had over the Soviet Union and China might restore the
country’s supremacy in world affairs.11
Certain conditions must be met for food power to be effective. For
major food exporters such as the United States, the presence of political will
is undoubtedly critical, but there are four additional conditions for food to
function effectively as a foreign policy instrument to influence other states’
behavior and further diplomatic or security goals (see Figure 1).12
The scarcity of food supplies is the first and most important condition.
Given the inelastic nature of food demand, especially for grains such as wheat,
prices can go up sharply when supply is limited. When an importer is willing
to pay a higher price for food, the country might also be prepared to make
some political concessions. A second requirement is the concentration of food
supply. Only when an exporter can control the food supply does its utility
as a foreign policy instrument become feasible. In theory, the leading food

8 Robert L. Paarlberg, “Food, Oil, and Coercive Resource Power,” International Security 3, no. 2 (1978):
3–19, https://doi.org/10.2307/2626678.
9 Gerhard, “Food as a Weapon.”
10 F.H. Sanderson, “The Uses and Limitations of Food Power,” Brookings Review 1, no. 4 (1983): 4–5.
11 Helena Tuomi, “The Food Power: The Position of Main Exporting Countries in World Food
Economy,” Instant Research on Peace and Violence 5, no. 3 (1975): 120–37.
12 Wallensteen, “Scarce Goods as Political Weapons.”

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FIGURE 1
The Four Conditions for the Food Power of Exporters

Conditions for
food power

Supply Demand Action

Scarcity
concentration dispersion independency

Source: Wallensteen, “Scarce Goods as Political Weapons.”

exporters could gain food power by forming a cartel for food similar to that
of OPEC for oil.13 Third, for food power to be effective, the demand for food
needs to be dispersed. The leading exporter will have more political leverage
if many importers are competing against each other for the limited supply.
In such a scenario, the dominant exporter can play the importers against
each other as well as increase prices or make food transfers conditional. Last,
for an exporter to control the food trade in the world market, its national
government must have the ability to control its domestic food supply. This can
be in the form of state control over the farmers or agribusinesses that produce
and process foodstuff or government access to other means to ensure that it
can maintain or extend control over its assets. These four conditions must
be present concurrently for the structural possibility of turning food into a
foreign policy instrument.14

Two Types of Food Power Relations

Building on Helga Ole Bergesen’s categorization of the global food
system during the Cold War era,15 the contemporary global food system
can be divided along two different lines of conflict. The first is the highly
asymmetric distribution of food power that exists between a major exporter

13 Joseph D. Coffey, “The Role of Food in the International Affairs of the United States,” Journal of
Agricultural and Applied Economics 13, no. 1 (1981): 29–37.
14 Wallensteen, “Scarce Goods as Political Weapons.”
15 Helge Ole Bergesen, “A New Food Regime: Necessary but Impossible,” International Organization
34, no. 2 (1980): 285–302.

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 zhang • the u.s.-china trade war

and small importer, or between a small exporter and major importer. In the
case of major food-exporting countries (e.g., the United States, Australia,
Canada, Brazil, and Russia) and food-importing developing countries
(e.g., Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Egypt), the distribution of food power
is highly asymmetric because the developing countries are much more
dependent on supplies from the exporting countries than the latter are on
the markets of the former. Likewise, this highly asymmetric relationship also
exists between major importers and small exporters. For instance, as China
emerges as the biggest food importer in the world and leading buyer of a
variety of agricultural products from many relatively small exporters, such
as Norway, the Philippines, and Canada, it enjoys unmatched food power
vis-à-vis these small exporters. On several occasions over the past decade,
China has arguably used its market access as a foreign policy instrument
to advance its geopolitical objectives. For instance, China banned banana
imports from the Philippines when the two countries were at odds with each
other over territorial issues in the South China Sea. On another occasion,
China imposed import controls on Norwegian salmon in alleged retribution
for the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident.16
The second is the conflict between the major exporting countries and the
big industrialized importers (China and, to a lesser extent, Japan). The food
relationship between these two groups is relatively symmetric. Even though
food supply from the major exporters is critical to the food security of the
importers, the latter’s markets are also of great importance to the exporters.
This symmetric relationship means that the circumstances from one harvest
year to another can potentially shift the food power balance in one direction
or the other. In the event of food scarcity, such as in times of a global food
crisis, the power balance favors exporters; conversely, the importers will have
the advantage in a surplus market.

The United States’ Past Attempts to Wield Food Power

The four conditions of food power and two types of food power relations
largely explain the successes and failures of the United States’ past attempts
to use food as a foreign policy instrument.17 During the Cold War, the vast
majority of U.S. food aid went to countries in which the United States had

16 Mark Lewis, “Norway’s Salmon Rot as China Takes Revenge for Dissident’s Nobel Prize,”
Independent (United Kingdom), October 6, 2011 u https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/
europe/norways-salmon-rot-as-china-takes-revenge-for-dissidents-nobel-prize-2366167.html.
17 Vandana Shiva, “Geopolitics of Food: America’s Use of Food as a Weapon,” Economic and Political
Weekly 23, no. 18 (1988): 881–82.

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a political, economic, or military interest. For example, between 1972 and

1973, 70% of the United States’ Food for Peace fund purchased food for
South Vietnam and Cambodia. When countries such as India, Bangladesh,
and Ethiopia, to name but a few, faced acute food shortages and even
famine, the United States used food aid as a foreign policy instrument to
advance its geopolitical interests.18 Most notably, several times the United
States deployed this weapon against its biggest rival, the Soviet Union,
as both a stick and a carrot to induce acceptable Soviet behavior.19 “The
Soviets quite literally had no other choice than to buy our grain or face
mass starvation,” wrote Henry Kissinger in his memoirs.20 China was also a
target during the Cold War.21 While sanctions on China tended to restrict
military or technological exports, food was included in comprehensive
embargoes in the 1950s and 1960s.22 During the famine in 1959–61, the
Chinese government had difficulties in importing food from abroad due to
embargoes imposed by Western countries.23
Nevertheless, despite the boastful claims from politicians and some
security experts, an in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of the United States’
past attempts to deploy food power against other states, particularly in the
form of embargoes, indicates that the power food confers is much less than
meets the eye. While the United States achieved limited success in its dealings
with smaller countries such as Chile, its attempts to use food as a foreign
policy instrument against bigger countries such as the Soviet Union, China,
and India failed completely.24 Even worse, the United States’ food embargoes
in the early 1970s led to the rapid rise of Latin American countries as food
exporters, resulting in a permanent loss of the U.S. share in certain markets
(mainly soybeans).25 In addition, the United States’ food embargo against the

18 Robert J. McMahon, “Food as a Diplomatic Weapon: The India Wheat Loan of 1951,” Pacific
Historical Review 56, no. 3 (1987): 349–77 u https://doi.org/10.2307/3638663; and Jack Shepherd,
“Ethiopia: The Use of Food as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 14
(1985): 4–9 u https://doi.org/10.2307/1262530.
19 H. Friedmann, “The International Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis,” International
Journal of Health Services: Planning, Administration, Evaluation 25, no. 3 (1995): 511–38 u https://
doi.org/10.2190/451A-896W-GGLK-ELXT.
20 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).
21 Paul M. Evans, “Caging the Dragon: Post-War Economic Sanctions Against the People’s Republic of
China,’’ Utility of International Economic Sanctions (1987), 59–86.
22 Frank Cain, “The U.S.-led Trade Embargo on China: The Origins of CHINCOM, 1947–52,” Journal of
Strategic Studies 18, no. 4 (1995): 33–54 u https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399508437618.
23 Yongzheng Yang, “Are Food Embargoes a Real Threat to China?” in China in the Global Economy,
ed. Peter John Lloyd and Xiaoguang Zhang (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000), 241–60.
24 Harriet Friedmann, “The Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis,” New Left Review, no. 197
(1993): 41.
25 Ibid.

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 zhang • the u.s.-china trade war

Soviet Union in 1980 was considered one of the woes leading to the defeat of
Jimmy Carter in that year’s presidential election.26
The reason for these failures is straightforward: the four conditions for
food power are extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible, to meet.27 First, it
is very difficult to control agricultural production, which not only depends on
individual decisions of thousands of private agribusiness firms and millions of
farmers but also weather conditions. Even though the government can exert
some influence on farmers and agribusinesses through various farm support
programs, it cannot control the weather.28
Second, whereas oil is a nonrenewable resource with limited alternatives
to replace it as a source of energy, food is a renewable resource that can be
defined as any substance consumed to provide nutrition. This means that
scarcity in one food product is easily addressed by relying on alternative
supplies or boosting domestic production through the allocation of more
agricultural resources.
Third, even for a country that is the predominant food exporter, the supply
of agricultural products, particularly grains, is diverse. Back in the 1970s
and 1980s, only 10% of the world’s food was consumed in countries other
than where it was produced, whereas 50% of the oil was consumed in other
countries. A curtailment of food exports would have only a modest impact
on world food supplies, while a stoppage of oil exports would drastically
affect availability around the world.29 Global food markets, especially the
grain market, are too “thin” to allow the kind of diplomatic bargaining and
manipulation that has characterized the oil market.30
Fourth, the United States’ past food embargoes against foreign countries
suffered from severe leakages as the U.S. government struggled to control
the volume and direction of international food transfers. Given the fact that
the United States is not a state-trading country, almost all of its agricultural
and food exports are handled by Cargill, Bunge, Archer Daniels Midland,
and other transnational agribusinesses that have operations all over the
globe. These companies and their subsidiaries are capable of using complex

26 Friedmann, “The International Political Economy of Food.”

27 Paarlberg, “Food, Oil, and Coercive Resource Power”; and Robert L. Paarlberg, “Food as an
Instrument of Foreign Policy,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 34, no. 3 (1982):
25–39 u https://doi.org/10.2307/1173726.
28 Hongzhou Zhang, “Food in Sino-U.S. Relations: From Blessing to Curse?” in China’s Global Quest for
Resources, ed. Fengshi Wu and Hongzhou Zhang (London; New York: Routledge, 2016), 112–130.
29 Ibid.
30 Henry R. Nau, “The Diplomacy of World Food: Goals, Capabilities, Issues and Arenas,”
International Organization 32, no. 3 (1978): 775–809.

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transactions and transshipments to organize agricultural trade, which is

outside the knowledge, much less the control, of any state (including the
United States).31 To make matters worse, the parties responsible for the leakages
included not only transnational agribusinesses but also U.S. allies and the U.S.
government itself. For example, Canada, despite being a committed member
of the Western alliance and openly supporting the United States’ efforts to
isolate China, embarked on large-scale grain sales to China in the late 1950s.
This continued even in the face of sustained opposition from Washington.
During the period, Canada signed long-term sales agreements with China
and managed to export millions of tons of wheat and other agricultural
products to the Communist country.32 More recently, farm groups have been
circumventing U.S. food sanctions against Iran and other countries by using a
legal Treasury Department loophole.33

the food power balance between

china and the united states

The Decline of U.S. Food Power

Although the United States’ attempts to wield food power were largely
ineffective in achieving its foreign policy goals during the Cold War, the
United States had enjoyed substantial food power against China when the
country was among the poorest in the world. However, the food power
enjoyed by the United States against China has gradually waned in recent
years as China has emerged as a major industrial power. Three key factors
account for this decline.
First, even though China has become the largest agricultural importer
in the world, its domestic production has experienced incredible growth
over the past decades, making it an agricultural and food powerhouse
in its own right. As seen in Table 1, the country’s agricultural production
increased dramatically from 1979 to 2018. China’s cereal (rice, wheat, and
corn) production nearly doubled during the period, and increases in the

31 Jeffrey G, “The Soviet Grain Embargo,” Heritage Foundation, February 1, 1981 u https://www.
heritage.org/trade/report/the-soviet-grain-embargo; and Marc-William Palen, “How the Farm
Lobby Distorts U.S. Foreign Policy—FPIF,” Foreign Policy in Focus, January 7, 2011 u http://fpif.
org/how_the_farm_lobby_distorts_us_foreign_policy/.
32 Greg Donaghy and Michael D. Stevenson, “The Limits of Alliance: Cold War Solidarity and
Canadian Wheat Exports to China, 1950–1963,” Agricultural History 83, no. 1 (2009): 29–50.
33 Jo Becker, “U.S. Approved Business with Blacklisted Nations,” New York Times, December 23, 2010
u https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/world/24sanctions.html.

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TABLE 1
Outputs of Major Agricultural Products in China
(Million Metric Tons)

2018 1979 (1996*) Change

Grains 657.9 332.1 98%
Soybeans 16.0 7.5 114%
Aquatic products 64.6 3.2 1,925%
Meat 86.2 10.6 712%
Vegetables 703.5 301.2* 134%
Fruits 256.9 46.5* 452%

Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, “National Data” u http://data.stats.gov.cn/english/easyquery.

htm?cn=C01.

production of meat (pork, beef, and mutton) and aquatic products were even
more remarkable—growing by nineteen times and seven times, respectively.
Therefore, despite China being the top grain importer in the world, its total
imports are only a tiny portion of its total grain production. Furthermore,
China has the world’s largest grain reserve system, which enables it to
withstand external trade shocks. Besides, even though the United States is the
world’s largest grain exporter, China is the world’s top producer and exporter
of a wide variety of other agricultural products, such as one-third of all aquatic
products and over half of vegetables and melons.34
Second, the decline of the United States’ food power against China has
also been partially attributable to its shrinking share in the global agricultural
export market. While the United States is still the largest agricultural exporter,
it no longer holds the dominant position because of the rise of other exporters,
including the European Union, Brazil, Argentina, and Russia. Its share of
global wheat exports, for example, has declined steadily since the 1970s (see
Figure 2). In 1973, U.S. wheat exports accounted for half of the global total;
yet by 2017, the U.S. share had dropped to about 14%. A similar trend is
observed in other farm products. Furthermore, unlike major oil producers
that have OPEC to coordinate oil production and export decisions, there is no
coordination among the world’s grain exporters.

34 Hongzhou Zhang, “Fisheries Cooperation in the South China Sea: Evaluating the Options,” Marine
Policy 89 (February 2018): 67–76 u https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.12.014.

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FIGURE 2
U.S. Share of the Global Wheat Export Market

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, “FAOSTAT,” 2018 u http://www.
fao.org/faostat/en/#data/TP; and USDA, “Grain.”

Third, the United States’ leverage on soybean exports, which have

long been considered the Achilles heel of China’s food security,35 has been
gradually diminishing as well. After China started importing soybeans in the
mid-1990s, it quickly became the biggest soybean importer in the world.36 In
2017, Chinese imports reached 95.3 million metric tons, which accounted for
85% of domestic consumption and 65% of the total traded soybeans on the
international market. Nevertheless, the emergence of Brazil and Argentina as
major soybean exporters in the 1970s significantly weakened the United States’
influence over global soybean trade. U.S. soybean exports accounted for over
90% of the global total in 1971, but by 2016 the U.S. share had dropped to only
about two-fifths, trailing Brazil.37 Similarly, in 2004 the United States was the

35 Lucy Hornby, “Cofco Unveils IPO Plans to Compete with U.S. Agribusinesses,” Financial Times,
October 28, 2014 u https://www.ft.com/content/05686af6-5ea1-11e4-b81d-00144feabdc0.
36 Vincent H. Smith and Joseph W. Glauber, “Trade, Policy, and Food Security,” Agricultural
Economics 51, no. 1 (2020): 159–71 u https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12547.
37 USDA, Grain: World Markets and Trade (Washington D.C.: USDA, 2017) u https://apps.fas.usda.
gov/psdonline/circulars/grain.pdf.

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leading supplier of soybeans to the Chinese market, contributing about 50%

of the total. However, it has since fallen to second place after being overtaken
by Brazil in 2014 (see Table 2).

TABLE 2
China’s Major Soybean Suppliers Before the Trade War
(Million Metric Tons)

Country 2004 2014 2015 2016

United States 10.0 30.0 28.4 34.1

Brazil 5.6 32.0 40.0 38.2

Argentina 4.4 6.0 9.4 8.0

Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, “National Data.”

China’s Efforts to Tip the Food Power Balance in Its Favor

Concurrent with the decline of U.S. food power, China has gradually
realized that its vast domestic market for agricultural products can become a
powerful source of political leverage against not only smaller trading partners
(such as the Philippines and Norway) but also the United States. As discussed
in the previous section, as China emerges as a global economic power, its
food relationship with the United States has become more or less symmetric.
As a result, the food power balance between the two countries is now to a
large extent contingent on the global food market. During times of food
scarcity, the power balance generally favors the United States as the major
food exporter; conversely, China has an advantageous position in a surplus
market. Although this means that the food power balance does not always
favor one country, efforts can be taken by either side to strengthen its food
power vis-à-vis the other. The shifts in the four conditions that explain the
food power position of the leading exporters (primarily the United States)
can also be used to tip the balance in the opposite direction to favor the major
food-importing countries, such as China. After becoming the leading food

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importer, China has taken four key steps to tip the balance of food power in
its favor.
First, China has made overseas agricultural investment a key measure
to safeguard its food security and strengthen its food power. With the
launch of the country’s high-profile Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), outward
agricultural investment has accelerated. Between 2013 and 2018, it grew at a
rapid annualized rate of 36%. By the end of 2018, China had an accumulated
overseas direct agricultural investment of $19 billion, with Chinese
agribusinesses operating in one hundred countries.38 While there have been
growing concerns that China’s overseas agricultural investment is a kind of
neocolonialism with the ultimate objective of locking up food resources for its
own consumption, Chinese officials offer different explanations.
Chinese officials have reiterated many times that Chinese investment in
Africa and other developing countries is not about producing food for China
but about boosting local production so that these countries will import less
food and become self-sufficient. For instance, at the 2012 China Agribusiness
Development Forum, Chen Xiwen, the deputy head of China’s central
agricultural working group, stated that “agricultural products from the
country’s overseas investment need not be transported back to China. As long
as China’s overseas agricultural investment could help harness the potential
of global food production, the increase in global food supply could be the
bulwark against China’s food insecurity.”39 Through substantial agricultural
investment, particularly in BRI countries, together with extensive agricultural
aid and technical assistance, China is determined to boost production to keep
the global food market in a surplus state. As mentioned earlier, a global food
glut, in contrast to food scarcity, favors food importers. Less competition
for food imports leads to demand concentration in the global food market,
thereby enhancing China’s food power as the biggest importer.
Second, China has pursued an import diversification strategy. Such
diversification involves the import of various agricultural and food
products via multiple channels, regions, and approaches.40 To date, China
has signed more than 120 bilateral and multilateral agreements on food

38 Foreign Economic Cooperation Center of China, “Zhongguo nongyezouchuqu qiye kuaguo

binggou anli fenxi yu qishi” [China’s Agricultural Going Out and Overseas M&A: Analysis and
Lessons], Foreign Economic Cooperation Center of China, December 17, 2019 u http://www.fecc.
agri.cn/yjzx/yjzx_yjcg/201912/t20191217_344094.html.
39 Xiwen Chen, “Zhongguo jiejuelianshi wenti yaoyou quanqiu shiye” [China Needs Global Vision to
Solve Its Food Problem], Zhongguo xiangcun faxia, no. 4 (2012): 4.
40 Hongzhou Zhang and Guoqiang Cheng, “China’s Food Security Strategy Reform,” China’s Global
Quest for Resources: Energy, Food and Water 46 (2016): 23.

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trade and agriculture cooperation with over 60 countries and international

organizations. Its objective is to reduce the risks caused by overdependence
on the United States for food supply. For instance, unlike its agricultural
investment in Africa, China’s investments in Southeast Asia, Russia, Central
Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Latin America focus on cultivating
new suppliers of food for the international market. These efforts are aimed to
create supply dispersion.
To date, this diversification strategy has been quite successful. In addition
to the case of soybeans mentioned above, corn is another example of its
success. Concerned with over-reliance on the United States for corn, China
promptly opened its market to imports from Argentina and Ukraine. In 2012,
China’s imports were almost all from the United States, but in 2016 Ukraine
supplied nearly 84% of the corn to China, and the U.S. share had dropped to
about 7% (see Table 3). Similarly, when China’s sorghum imports from the
United States rose to over 4 million metric tons in 2014, Beijing approved
imports from Argentina.41 With China’s huge agricultural investments in
Russia and countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern and Central
Europe, as well as the opening of new trade routes under BRI, its soybean,
corn, and wheat imports from these countries will continue to grow.

TABLE 3
China’s Major Corn Suppliers

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Total 5.20 3.18 2.49 4.59 3.13
United States
5.10 2.88 1.00 0.46 0.22
(million metric tons)
United States (% share) 98% 91% 40% 10% 7%
Ukraine
0.00 0.11 0.91 3.71 2.63
(million metric tons)
Ukraine (% share) 0% 3% 36% 81% 84%

Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, “National Data.“

41 Fred Gale, James Hansen, and Michael Jewison, “China’s Growing Demand for Agricultural
Imports,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Information Bulletin, no. 2015.

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Third, apace with the rapid growth of its outward direct investment in the
agricultural and food sectors, China has also been committed to creating its
own global agribusinesses to strengthen its control over food supply beyond
the country’s borders as its dependence on the global food market grows.42
In addition to domestic consolidation, a common approach taken by both
state-owned agribusinesses (such as COFCO and Beidahuang Group) and
private “dragon head enterprises” (such as the WH Group and the New Hope
Group) for global expansion is overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A).43
Over the past decade, there has been a large increase in China’s overseas
agriculture-related M&A, which totaled $69 billion between 2010 and
2019.44 Among these deals, the most well-known is ChemChina’s $44 billion
purchase of Swiss pesticides and seeds giant Syngenta. This is the largest-ever
overseas acquisition by a Chinese company. The second-largest deal is the
WH Group’s $7.1 billion acquisition of U.S.-based Smithfield Foods, the
world’s largest pork producer.45 China’s agricultural-related M&A has mostly
targeted established agribusinesses in developed countries, with the dual
aim of acquiring the scientific know-how needed to improve domestic food
production and quickly expanding the global reach of Chinese agribusiness.
Fourth, China has also taken efforts to weaken the “action independence”
of the United States.46 Through buying Smithfield Foods in 2014 and
Clougherty Packing in 2017, the WH Group is now handling U.S. pork
exports to China. Similarly, ChemChina’s purchase of Syngenta has provided
China with direct access to advanced crop protections and genetically
modified technology, including Syngenta’s research and production facilities
in the United States, significantly strengthening China’s control over the
process of importing and commercializing genetically modified crops. In
late December 2017, China’s largest state-owned agribusiness COFCO and
U.S. farm cooperative Growmark reached an agreement that gives COFCO

42 Hongzhou Zhang, “Creating China’s Global Agribusinesses,” in Securing the ‘Rice Bowl’: China and
Global Food Security, ed. Hongzhou Zhang (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 235–63.
43 “China’s ODI in Agriculture: The Third Wave,” Economist, July 18, 2017 u http://country.eiu.com/
article.aspx?articleid=335678817&Country=China&topic=Economy&subtopic=Regi_4. Dragon
head enterprises are private agribusinesses that have close ties to the regional government where
they are based and are recipients of grants and policy support.
44 Foreign Economic Cooperation Center of China, “Zhongguo nongyezouchuqu qiye kuaguo
binggou anli fenxi yu qishi.”
45 Jack Perkowski, “Smithfield and Shuanghui: Two Pigs in a Blanket?” Forbes, June 3, 2013 u http://
www.wh-group.com/en/news/mediaclips/mc130603.pdf; and Carol Zhong and Julie Zhu, “Bank of
China Main Backer as ChemChina Raises $20 Billion for Syngenta Deal,” Reuters, May 25, 2017 u
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chemchina-m-a-financing-idUSKBN18L0DI.
46 Hongzhou Zhang, “Food Power in the Context of Sino-American Rivalry,” in Zhang, Securing the
‘Rice Bowl,’ 207–33.

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more direct access to Growmark’s food supplies. In addition, COFCO also

acquired a terminal in St. Louis as part of a deal with Nidera in 2014.47 For
years, China has been interested in boosting its global agricultural monitoring
capacities to enhance its food pricing power.48 Investing in the United States’
agricultural and food sector helps China gain access to valuable agricultural
data and have a better understanding of megatrends in U.S. food production
and consumption patterns. To be sure, owning agricultural assets—either by
state-owned enterprises or private companies—does not always mean greater
Chinese control over food supply chains, and the practice can sometimes
create political liabilities. For instance, amid rising tensions between China
and the United States, there has been opposition to Smithfield Foods in the
United States due to its Chinese ownership.49
The surplus in the global food supply has also been a blessing for China.
After the global recession in 2007–8, countries around the world have
invested substantially in boosting food production. When compounded by
the decline of biofuel, this trend has created a general state of surplus in the
world food market. As Figure 3 shows, by 2016 the global food price dropped
significantly below its peak value during the food crisis.50 By the time Trump
was elected president in late 2016, the excess in global food supply and China’s
efforts to boost its food power had successfully tipped the food power balance
in its favor.

china ’ s use of food power

against the united states

With the food power balance tilting toward China, the Chinese
government, which had long worried about being a target of U.S. food
embargoes,51 has started deploying food as a foreign policy instrument
against the United States, particularly during the rising trade tensions under

47 Nan Zhong, “COFCO Unit Partners with U.S.-Based Co-Op,” China Daily, August 22, 2017 u
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-08/22/content_30943464.htm.
48 State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “Nongyebu guanyu tuijin nongye nongcun dashuju
fazhan de shishi yijian” [The Ministry of Agriculture’s Implementation Opinions on Promoting
Agricultural and Rural Big Data Development], December 29, 2015 u http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/
content/2016/content_5061698.htm.
49 “Boycott Smithfield Foods. Say No to China’s Ownership” u https://www.boycottsmithfieldfoods.com.
50 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief,”
2020 u http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en.
51 Daojiong Zha and Hongzhou Zhang, “Food in China’s International Relations,” Pacific Review 26,
no. 5 (2013): 455–79.

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FIGURE 3
FAO Food Price Index (Nominal Terms)

Source: FAO, “FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief.”

the Trump administration. Food is being used by China as both a carrot and
stick to influence Trump’s trade policy toward China (as seen in Table 4).

Food as a Carrot
Amid the escalating trade war, China has used agricultural access to
its domestic market as a way of showing goodwill to the United States.52
As Table 4 shows, in April 2017, during Xi Jinping’s first visit to the United
States after Trump assumed the presidency, the two leaders initiated a
hundred-day action plan to prioritize agricultural cooperation. Notably,
China agreed to end the ban on U.S. beef and grant certificates for two of
the eight U.S. genetically modified products. In July 2017 a delegation of
Chinese agribusinesses also signed deals to purchase over 12 million metric
tons of U.S. soybeans, in addition to 371 metric tons of beef and pork.53

52 Zhang, “Food Power in the Context of Sino-American Rivalry.”

53 “China Signs Second-Largest Deal for U.S. Soybeans,” Global Times, July 16, 2017 u http://www.
globaltimes.cn/content/1056520.shtml.

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 zhang • the u.s.-china trade war
TABLE 4
Cases of China Using Food as Either a Carrot or a Stick
against the United States
April 6–7, 2017: Xi visits the United
States and the two countries agree to
a hundred-day action plan to resolve
trade differences.
November 8–10, 2017: Trump visits
China, and relations are considered to
have warmed.
March 22–23, 2018: Trump decides to
impose tariffs on Chinese products
and file a WTO case against China
for their discriminatory licensing
practices.
April 3, 2018: The United States
releases an initial list of 1,334
proposed products (worth $50 billion)
subject to a potential 25% tariff.
April 16, 2018: U.S. companies are
banned from doing business with ZTE
for seven years.
May 13, 2018: Trump promises to help
ZTE.
July 6, 2018: The United States
implements first China-specific tariffs
and begins collecting a 25% tariff on
818 imported Chinese products valued
at $34 billion.
August 2, 2018: The United States
considers a 25% tariff rather than a
10% one on Chinese goods.
November 9, 2018: The United States
and China resume trade talks.
December 2, 2018: The United States
and China agree to a temporary truce.
January 7–9, 2019: The United States
and China engage in three-day trade
talks in Beijing.
May 22, 2017: The United States and
China agree to a trade deal that would
give U.S. firms greater access to China’s Carrot
agriculture, energy, and financial
markets.
November 9, 2017: The two countries
sign agreements on 12 million metric
Carrot
tons of soybeans, and $2 billion of
beef, pork, and other products.
April 2, 2018: China imposes tariffs
(ranging from 15%–25%) on 128
products (worth $3 billion) including Stick
fruit, wine, seamless steel pipes, pork,
and recycled aluminum.
April 4, 2018: China proposes 25%
tariffs to be applied on 106 products
Stick
(worth $50 billion) on goods such as
soybeans, automobiles, and chemicals.
April 17, 2018: China announces
anti-dumping duties of 178.6% on
Stick
imports of sorghum from the United
States.
May 18, 2018: China announces
negotiations that it will stop tariffs on Carrot
U.S. sorghum at negotiations.
July 2018: China imposes a 25% tariff
on 545 U.S. goods (worth $34 billion),
including agricultural products, Stick
automobiles, and aquatic products,
and stops purchasing U.S. soybeans.
August 3, 2018: China announces
a second round of tariffs on U.S.
Stick
products (worth $60 billion), including
mainly agricultural products.
December 2, 2018: China announces
that it will purchase more U.S. products,
especially agricultural and energy Carrot
products, and will crack down on
fentanyl.
December 14, 2018: China resumes
buying U.S. soybeans with a large Carrot
purchase of 1.5 million tons.
January 9, 2019: China pledges to
purchase a substantial amount of
agricultural, energy, manufactured Carrot
goods, and other products and
services from the United States.
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Table 4 continued
January 30–31, 2019: The United States
and China hold two-day trade talks in
Washington, D.C.
May 10, 2019: The United States
increases tariffs from 10% to 25%.
May 16, 2019: The United States places
Huawei on its “entity list,” banning it
from purchasing from U.S. companies.
June 18–July 31, 2019: Xi and Trump
rekindle trade talks at G-20 meeting
and reach a tentative truce.
August 1, 2019: Trump states that the
United States will impose 10% tariffs
on another $300 billion of Chinese
goods and declares China a currency
manipulator.
August 13, 2019: The United States
announces tariffs on $300 billion
worth of Chinese goods.
September 1, 2019: The United States
begins implementing tariffs on more
than $125 billion worth of Chinese
imports as scheduled.
September 5, 2019: China and the
United States agree to a 13th round of
trade talks, and the U.S. agrees to delay
increasing tariffs on $250 billion worth
of Chinese imports.
October 11, 2019: The United States
announces the phase-one deal and
delays tariff increases for Chinese
goods.
January–February 2020: The United
States and China sign the phase-one
trade deal.
Source: Compiled by the author based on an event summary from the China Briefing website. See Dorcas Wong
and Alexander Chipman Koty, “The U.S.-China Trade War: A Timeline,” China Briefing News, May 13, 2020 u
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/the-us-china-trade-war-a-timeline.
January 30–31, 2019: During the
negotiations, China offers to buy Carrot
5 million tons of U.S. soybeans.
May 13, 2019: China announces that
it will increase tariffs on $60 billion
worth of U.S. goods; products affected
Stick
include beef, lamb, pork, vegetables,
juice, cooking oil, tea, and coffee,
among many others.
June 1, 2019: China increases tariffs
on $60 billion worth of products, Stick
including many agricultural products.
June 2019: China pledges to purchase
U.S. soybeans, pork, ethanol, and other Carrot
agricultural commodities.
August 6, 2019: Chinese companies
suspend new U.S. agricultural
product purchases; the Customs Tariff
Commission of the State Council does Stick
not rule out import tariffs on newly
purchased U.S. agricultural products
after August 3.
August 23, 2019: China announces
$75 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods, Stick
including mainly agricultural products.
September 1, 2019: China begins
imposing additional tariffs on some
of the goods including agricultural Stick
products, automobiles, and aquatic
products.
September 13, 2019: China exempts
various agricultural products,
including U.S. soybeans, pork, and Carrot
other farm goods, from additional
tariffs.
October 11, 2019: As part of the
phase-one agreement, China will
Carrot
reportedly purchase $40–$50 billion in
U.S. agricultural products annually.
February 14–17, 2020: China halves
tariffs on 1,717 U.S. goods, including
many agricultural products, and grants
Carrot
tariff exemptions on U.S. pork, beef,
soybeans, wheat, corn, sorghum, and
others.
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Shortly thereafter, China approved imports of U.S. rice for the first time ever.
Then, during Trump’s first visit to China in November 2017, agribusinesses
from the two countries reached several purchase agreements, according to
which Chinese companies would buy an additional 12 million metric tons of
soybeans (valued at $5 billion) from the United States.54 A deal was also signed
for the purchase of $2 billion worth of U.S. beef, pork, and other products.55
Since the trade war started in July 2018, China on many occasions has
offered either to lower the tariffs on U.S. farm products or to purchase a large
amount of farm products to bring the United States back to the negotiation
table. When the trade talks resumed in November 2018, China promised to
buy more farm products. One month later, as part of measures to bring about
a temporary truce, China resumed buying U.S. soybeans, and over 1.5 million
metric tons of soybeans were purchased on December 12, 2018.56 China
offered to purchase another 5 million metric tons of soybeans in January
2019.57 Again, in June 2019, when Trump and Xi rekindled trade talks at the
G-20 meeting, China proposed buying a large amount of U.S. soybeans, pork,
and other agricultural products.58 Most crucially, in October 2019, China’s
offer to purchase $40–$50 billion worth of U.S. agricultural products was the
key factor behind the successful phase-one deal between the two countries.59
While the Covid-19 pandemic has raised doubts about the fate of the trade
deal, China has made notable progress in fulfilling its agricultural purchase
commitments. For instance, a wide variety of U.S. agricultural products, such
as blueberries, barley, and other forage-related products, as well as California
Hass avocados, can now be exported to China. Also, U.S. meat exports to
China have been on the rise. In the first quarter of 2020, China’s pork imports

54 Dominique Patton, “Update 2—China to Buy Another 12 Mln T of U.S. Soybeans in

2017/18 in $5 Bln Deals,” Reuters, November 9, 2017 u https://www.reuters.com/article/
trump-asia-china-soybeans-idUSL3N1NF1UL.
55 Phoebe Sedgman, “China’s JD.Com Commits to Buy $2 Billion U.S. Goods amid Trump Visit,”
Bloomberg, November 8, 2017 u https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-08/
china-s-jd-com-commits-to-buy-2b-u-s-goods-amid-trump-visit.
56 “Trump Gets Win as Xi Makes Good on Pledge to Buy U.S. Soy,” Bloomberg, December 12, 2018 u
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/china-purchases-1-5m-2m-tons-of-u-s-
soybeans-export-council.
57 Jodi Xu Klein and Owen Churchill, “China Says It Will Buy More Soybeans, but U.S. Farmers See a
Bleak Future,” South China Morning Post, February 4, 2019 u https://www.scmp.com/news/china/
diplomacy/article/2184825/china-says-it-will-buy-more-soybeans-american-farmers-see-bleak.
58 Everett Rosenfeld, “Trump Says He Agreed with Xi to Hold Off on New Tariffs and to Let Huawei
Buy U.S. Products,” CNBC, June 29, 2019 u https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/29/us-china-trade-
war-trump-and-xi-meet-at-g-20-summit-in-osaka.html.
59 “China to Buy US$50 Billion in U.S. Farm Products in Return for Tariff Concessions: U.S.
Sources,” Straits Times, December 13, 2019 u https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/
wall-street-rises-as-trump-tweets-very-close-to-china-trade-deal.

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from the United States reached 280,000 metric tons, which is a 300% increase
over the first three months of 2019.60

Food as a Stick
Food has also been China’s prefered weapon of retaliation against the
United States. In late 2017, responding to the United States’ anti-dumping
and countervailing duties and investigations of imports of common alloy
aluminum sheet from China, Beijing threatened to curb imports of U.S.
soybeans.61 It also imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on U.S.
imports of distillers’ dried grains, a corn-based ethanol byproduct used for
animal feed. Then, in February 2018, after the United States placed tariffs on
Chinese-manufactured washing machines and solar panels, China began an
anti-dumping investigation into U.S. sorghum imports. On April 2, 2018,
Beijing responded to new U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs with tariffs of its own
on imports of 128 U.S. product lines, including 94 agricultural products such
as fresh and dried fruit, tree nuts, wine, and pork. Two days later, responding
to the Trump administration’s announcement of a potential 25% tariff on
1,300 different Chinese imports valued at $50 billion, China retaliated with a
list of 106 U.S. products, including soybeans, sorghum, cotton, corn, wheat,
beef, and other products, that would be subject to a 25% tariff.62
As seen in Table 4, during the fifteen-month trade war, food has
unequivocally been China’s most potent weapon against the United States.
Almost every time Washington imposed a new tariff or other trade restriction,
Beijing retaliated through either imposing tariffs on U.S. farm products
or suspending agricultural purchases altogether. For instance, right after
Washington imposed China-specific tariffs in July 2018, Beijing lashed out
with tariffs on U.S. agricultural and aquatic products and stopped purchasing
soybeans. After so many rounds of tariffs and import restrictions on farm
products, U.S. agricultural sales to China plummeted. In 2017, agricultural
exports to China had totaled $23.8 billion. However, during the trade war in
2018, their value declined to $7.9 billion (though they recovered slightly to

60 Karen Braun, “U.S. Faces Meat Shortage While Its Pork Exports to China Soar: Braun,” Reuters,
May 5, 2020 u https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pork-braun-idUSKBN22H2Q6.
61 Michael Hirtzer, “Update 2—China Tightens Import Specifications on U.S. Soybean—USDA,”
Reuters, December 20, 2017 u https://uk.reuters.com/article/usa-soybeans-china/update-2-china-
tightens-import-specifications-on-u-s-soybeans-usda-idUKL1N1OK1KG.
62 “Farm Bureau to Congress: Tariffs’ Impact on U.S. Agriculture Must be Considered,” Farm Bureau,
April 17, 2018 u https://www.fb.org/news/farm-bureau-to-congress-tariffs-impact-on-u.s.-
agriculture-must-be-consider.

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$11 billion in 2019). Soybean producers suffered the biggest loss. U.S. soybean
exports to China totaled $12.2 billion in 2017 but fell to a mere $3.1 billion in
2018, a 75% drop year-on-year.

Impacts and Implications of China’s Food Weapon against the

United States
Apart from China’s long-standing efforts to enhance its food power, two
additional factors make food products potentially attractive and powerful
trade weapons. First, as discussed above, the global food market is in a state
of surplus, with excess supply and sluggish demand keeping food prices low.
This strengthens the market powers of China as the largest importer and
conversely hurts major exporters. In the case of the United States, owing to
multiple years of abundant harvests and record levels of livestock, dairy, and
meat production, farm income has remained at concerningly low levels.63
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, net farm income
declined by half between 2013 and 2016, “the largest three-year drop since
the Great Depression.”64 Facing this unprecedented economic crisis, exports
to China are thus vital to the economic well-being of U.S. farms and rural
communities. It has been estimated that, on average, an American farmer
annually exports about $12,000 worth of agricultural products to China.65
Second, farmers and rural voters are extremely important for Trump’s
re-election.66 According to economist Paul Krugman, in the U.S. electoral
system, “farmers exert disproportionate political influence.”67 The American
Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the parent organization of nearly three
thousand state- and county-level bureaus representing more than six million
member families from all 50 states, is often considered the most influential

63 “Make Agricultural Trade Great Again,” American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), January 31,
2018, https://www.fb.org/market-intel/make-agricultural-trade-great-again.
64 J.R. Sullivan, “America’s Farmers Are in Crisis, and They’re Looking to Donald Trump for
Relief,” New Yorker, January 23, 2018 u https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/
americas-farmers-are-in-crisis-and-theyre-looking-to-trump-for-relief.
65 Xu Jing, Miao Zhuang, and Wang Ping, “Yearender: China-U.S. Agricultural Trade Leaps Forward in
2017,” Xinhua, December 21, 2017 u http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-12/21/c_136841334.
htm.
66 Shannon M. Monnat and David L. Brown, “More than a Rural Revolt: Landscapes of Despair
and the 2016 Presidential Election,” Journal of Rural Studies 55 (2017): 227–36; and Jessica D.
Ulrich-Schad and Cynthia M. Duncan, “People and Places Left behind: Work, Culture and Politics
in the Rural United States,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45, no. 1 (2018): 59–79.
67 Paul Krugman, “The Frauding of America’s Farmers,” New York Times, August 29, 2019 u
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/opinion/trump-trade-farmers.html.

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player in the U.S. agriculture lobby.68 Each year, the AFBF spends millions
of dollars to influence federal legislation. Through its state chapters and
political-action committees, the AFBF also wields considerable influence
in state capitals and local elections.69 More importantly for Trump, it was
support from rural voters that helped him win the presidential election in
2016.70 Trump’s 26% advantage over Hillary Clinton in rural America far
exceeded the margins by which Republican nominees had won those voters
in the four previous elections.71 Therefore, making farmers happy is critical
for Trump politically.
China’s attempts to deploy food as a foreign policy instrument against the
United States have worked, at least partially. Food import restrictions have
created considerable costs for American farmers. As noted earlier, China’s
soybean imports from the United States dropped by as much as 75%. U.S.
pork producers are similarly vulnerable. China is the third-largest market for
U.S. pigs and the biggest market for pig feet, livers, and hearts, which are not
typically consumed by Americans. Pork producers could lose most, if not all,
of this business. The annual loss would range between $1.7 and $3.3 billion.
Facing retaliatory tariffs from China, U.S. farm groups stepped up their efforts
to pressure the Trump administration to stop the trade war with China.72 For
instance, the AFBF has told Congress that it “believes in negotiations, not
additional tariffs, to resolve trade issues.” 73
The Trump administration’s tariff war against China has already
potentially damaged his political support from the rural voter.74 In the
2018 midterm elections, the Democrats experienced their largest vote share

68 “The Farm Bureau’s Billions: The Voice of Farmers or Agribusiness?” Food and Water Watch, July
2010 u https://www.panna.org/sites/default/files/FWW_FarmBureau.pdf.
69 Molly Ball, “How Republicans Lost the Farm,” Atlantic, January 27, 2014 u https://www.theatlantic.
com/politics/archive/2014/01/how-republicans-lost-the-farm/283349.
70 Robert E. Gutsche Jr., The Trump Presidency, Journalism, and Democracy (London: Routledge,
2018), 231.
71 Dan Balz, “Rural America Lifted Trump to the Presidency. Support Is Strong, but Not Monolithic.”
Washington Post, June 17, 2017 u https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rural-america-lifted-
trump-to-the-presidency-support-is-strong-but-not-monolithic/2017/06/16/df4f9156-4ac9-11e7-
9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html.
72 Adam Behsudi, Catherine Boudreau, and Doug Palmer, “Farmers to Trump: No Trade War, Please,”
Politico, April 6, 2018 u https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/06/farmers-trump-trade-war-467423;
and Casey Guernsey, “I’m a Farmer and Trump Voter. Here’s How He Can Keep Our Support,” Fortune,
April 18, 201 u http://fortune.com/2018/04/18/trump-trade-war-tariffs-farmers-china-nafta.
73 “Farm Bureau to Congress: Tariffs’ Impact on U.S. Agriculture Must Be Considered.”
74 “A Pig’s Ear of a Policy: Donald Trump Alienates Farmers,” Economist, April 19, 2018 u https://
economist.com/news/united-states/21740769-unpredictable-polices-are-costing-president-fans-
donald-trump-alienates-farmers; and Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Ana Swanson, “Farmers’ Anger at
Trump Tariffs Puts Republican Candidates in a Bind,” New York Times, April 7, 2018 u https://
www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/us/politics/trump-trade-china-politics-heartland.html.

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increase in rural constituencies when compared to the 2016 election.75

Although the Trump administration has offered $28 billion in financial
support to farmers, farmers are not pleased, as evidenced in the 2018 midterm
elections results. In contrast, in December 2019, ahead of the signing of the
phase-one deal, which involves massive farm sales to China, Trump’s approval
rating among American farmers increased notably: 49% of American farmers
approved of the way Trump was handling U.S. agriculture in late December
2019, compared to 43% in September 2019.76 To American farmers, trade is
more important than aid.77 The reason is simple: aid can be easily taken away,
and market share might never be fully regained once lost. Thus, China’s offer
to purchase $40–$50 billion worth of U.S. farm products is of huge political
importance to Trump’s re-election chances in 2020. Precisely for this reason,
Trump has tweeted many times that the phase one deal will be “biggest deal
ever” for American farmers.78
While the question of which country is winning the trade war remains
highly contentious, it appears that China’s deployment of food weapons
against the United States has achieved at least limited success. With the
signing of the phase-one deal, China succeeded in bringing the United
States back to the negotiation table, preventing further tariffs, and removing
and reducing some of the existing tariffs on Chinese products without
making substantial compromises on core interests, such as curbing China’s
state-owned enterprises. However, this interim deal is only a truce and does
not end the trade war. U.S. tariffs of 25% on $250 billion worth of Chinese
goods remain unchanged, and additional tariffs can be imposed at any time
by the Trump administration.
Moreover, for China, the economic and political costs of weaponizing
food have been enormous. Given the critical importance of the United States

75 “Democrats Did Much Better in Rural America than You Think,” Economist, December 8, 2018 u
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/12/08/democrats-did-much-better-in-rural-
america-than-you-think.
76 Tom Polansek and Chris Kahn, “U.S. Farmers Increased Support for Trump Ahead of ‘Phase 1’
Signing,” Reuters, January 16, 2020 u https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-farming-
poll-idUSKBN1ZF2K4.
77 “Lessons from the Trade War: Farmers Need Trade Not Aid, Market Demand Not Central
Planning,” Dallas Morning News, September 23, 2019 u https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/
editorials/2019/09/23/lessons-from-the-trade-war-farmers-need-trade-not-aid-market-demand-
not-central-planning; and Mario Parker and Shruti Singh, “ ‘Trade, Not Aid’: U.S. Farmers Give
Trump Plan a Cool Reception,” Bloomberg, July 25, 2018 u https://www.bloomberg.com/news/
articles/2018-07-25/-trade-not-aid-u-s-farmers-give-trump-plan-a-cool-reception.
78 Graeme Wearden, “U.S. and China Sign Phase One Trade Deal, but Experts Are Sceptical,”
Guardian, January 15, 2020 u https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2020/jan/15/us-
china-trade-deal-trump-tariffs-global-risks-uk-inflation-business-live; and “What Has Donald
Trump Actually Achieved on Trade?” BBC, January 19, 2020 u https://www.bbc.com/news/
business-51055491.

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to its food supply (particularly soybeans), imposing higher tariffs and other
restrictions on U.S. food products means that China had to source products
from other countries, usually less efficiently. This has brought higher costs
for Chinese consumers. For example, food processors were forced to pay a
much higher price for Brazil’s soybeans.79 Considering that maintaining
adequate food supplies to prevent high inflation is a national security matter
for Chinese authorities, the political cost associated with higher tariffs on U.S.
agricultural products cannot be ignored. With the outbreak of the African
swine fever and suspension of pork imports from the United States, in 2019
China’s domestic pork price rose by 110% over the previous year. As demand
shifted to other forms of protein, prices for beef, mutton, chicken, duck, and
eggs rose by between 11.8% and 25.7% during the same period.80
Given that food makes up more than one-third of the average consumer
basket, Chinese leaders are sensitive to inflation for good reason: food-induced
inflation poses a dire threat to the country’s sociopolitical stability.81 Inflation
in the 1930s and 1940s was among the key factors behind the Kuomintang’s
defeat by the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War.
Likewise, soaring grain prices in the late 1980s significantly contributed to
the high inflation of 1987–89 that partially led to the mass protests across the
country in the spring of 1989.82

conclusion

Caught in a trade war with the United States and possessing limited
options, it is understandable that China has wielded its newly gained food
power as a weapon. However, serious caution must be exercised given the
impact on the global economy and the potential political costs for both
governments. As past experiences have shown, food embargoes and higher
tariffs, instead of stopping bilateral agricultural trade flows, usually have

79 Darrin Pack, “Study: U.S. Soybean Production, Exports Would Fall If China Imposes Tariffs,”
Purdue University Agriculture News, March 28, 2018 u https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/
releases/2018/Q1/study-u.s.-soybean-production,-exports-would-fall-if-china-imposes-tariffs.
html; and Dominique Patton and Ana Mano, “Brazil Soybean Prices Surge as U.S.-China Trade
Spat Deepens,” Reuters, March 27, 2018.
80 Karen Yeung, “China’s Pork Price Rises 110 Per Cent Sending Consumer Inflation Rocketing to
Eight-Year High,” South China Morning Post, December 10, 2019 u https://www.scmp.com/economy/
china-economy/article/3041352/chinas-consumer-inflation-rockets-eight-year-high-pork-price.
81 Charlie Campbell, “China May Not Have Enough Arable Land to Feed Its People. But Big Changes
Are Coming,” Time, August 17, 2016 u http://time.com/4455462/china-agriculture-food-security.
82 John Wong and Zhiyue Bo, China’s Reform in Global Perspective (Singapore: World Scientific
Publishing, 2010).

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made trade inefficient and spurred smuggling. For instance, American food
traders, facing China’s trade restrictions, have long used Hong Kong as a
transshipment place to enter the Chinese market.83 Furthermore, despite the
trade bans, millions of metric tons of beef, pork, seafood, rice, sugar, nuts, and
other food products from the United States and other countries have been
smuggled into China via the land borders with its Southeast Asian neighbors
over the past few years.84
On a global scale, when China places trade restrictions on U.S. agriculture,
the effects are likely to be long-lasting.85 While a few other food exporters
such as Brazil, Argentina, and Canada stand to benefit, rising trade tensions
between the two major powers affects the world as a whole. Disruptions in
the global food trade not only affect the developed world but also harm the
livelihood of millions in the developing world.86 Given the fact that over
800 million people worldwide still suffer from periodic hunger, the food fight
between the two largest economies and top food traders will inevitability
bring more volatility to the global food market, undermining food security.87
In addition, environmental costs could be equally grave. For instance, China’s
surging demand for Brazil’s soybeans is considered one of the key contributing
factors to the fires in the Amazon rainforest.
Finally, Chinese policymakers should be reminded that the potential
political leverage that China as a major importer gains through food power is
ephemeral. In a relatively symmetric relationship, the balance of food power
is easily tipped in either direction.88 A weak global harvest (caused by bad
weather, major disease outbreak, or other factors), higher domestic inflation in

83 P.J. Huffstutter, and Krista Hughes, “ ‘Huge Amounts’ of Beef Going to China despite Ban—U.S.
Official,” Reuters, March 19, 2015 u https://www.reuters.com/article/beef-exports-transship/
huge-amounts-of-beef-going-to-china-despite-ban-u-s-official-idUSL2N0WL2B820150319.
84 Mark Godfrey, “China Continues Clampdown on Seafood Smuggling with New Seizure at Vietnam
Border,” Seafood Source, January 9, 2020 u https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/
china-continues-clampdown-on-seafood-smuggling-with-new-seizure-at-vietnam-border; Pratik
Parija, “China Clampdown on Illegal Meat Risks $2 Billion Trade,” Bloomberg, December 7, 2019
u https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-07/china-clampdown-on-illegal-meat-puts-

2-billion-trade-at-risk; and Hongzhou Zhang, “When Food Crosses Borders: Paradigm Shifts in
China’s Food Sectors and Implications for Vietnam,” in Food Anxiety in Globalising Vietnam, ed.
Judith Ehlert and Nora Katharina Faltmann (Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2019), 267–99.
85 Mervyn Piesse, “China Threatens Trade Retaliation against U.S. Agricultural Commodities,”
Future Directions International, March 7, 2018 u http://www.futuredirections.org.au/publication/
china-threatens-trade-retaliation-us-agricultural-commodities.
86 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2018 Global Food Policy Report (Washington,
D.C.: IFPRI, 2018) u http://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/132273/
filename/132488.pdf.
87 Mukhisa Kituyi, “Trade Wars Are Huge Threats to Food Security,” UN Conference on
Trade and Development, January 22, 2020, https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.
aspx?OriginalVersionID=2276.
88 Nau, “The Diplomacy of World Food.”

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China, or a major disruption to global food trade (as in the case of the current
Covid-19 pandemic) could quickly shift the food power balance to favor
the United States. Even more importantly, given that China is increasingly
dependent on the global market for food supply, a stable and flourishing trade
system is critical to the country’s overall food security, which is of paramount
importance to the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. This
means that ongoing attempts to use food as a foreign policy instrument could
be counterproductive.89 

89 Zha and Zhang, “Food in China’s International Relations.”

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