President Trump will fly to Beijing on May 14, and when he sits down across the table from Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist leader will almost certainly reach for the same card he has played against every American administration for a decade.
Whenever a trade negotiation turns tough, with tariffs climbing and tempers fraying, Beijing picks up the phone and orders its state buyers to stop purchasing American farm goods. Soybeans, mostly. Beef and pork have had their turns, too. The effect is immediate and brutal. Within days, commodity prices collapse, and somewhere in the American South, a man who planted forty acres for a harvest that was supposed to ship to China in October watches his year’s income evaporate.
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