Australian beef has replaced U.S. supply in China since Donald Trump returned to the White House, funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars that have in previous years gone to the U.S. cattle industry into Australian pockets.
U.S. shipments to China, worth around $120 million a month, collapsed after Beijing in March allowed permits to expire at hundreds of American meat facilities and as Trump unleashed a tit-for-tat tariff war.
Other U.S. farm exports to China, the world’s biggest food importer, have also suffered since Trump retook power. On soybeans alone, U.S. farmers have lost out on shipments worth billions of dollars during the current harvest season.
America’s pre-Trump position was due to them being the only major power left standing after World War II. After the rest of the world rebuilt, it maintained its dominant position mostly through inertia. The damage Trump is doing will never be undone, because the status quo that he’s destroying didn’t come about naturally; they were the result of very specific circumstances that aren’t going to repeat (I mean, a global war might, but not one that leaves the United States unscathed.)