U.S. farmers and agribusinesses face a rising threat of long-term losses in export sales as President Donald Trump’s trade war with China continues, Boston Consulting Group warned in a report yesterday.

The finding by a blue-chip management consulting firm could feed mounting fears among major U.S. agricultural players that the damage done from a tariff war that has already dragged on for more than a year will extend long after a deal is reached and a US$28 billion trade aid program for farmers ends.

The hit to exports has already strained a farm sector beleaguered by a six-year slump in prices for agricultural commodities and a string of wild weather this year.

Other nations are filling the gap in China and making investments to expand their production capacity, improve transportation networks and deepen relationships with importers, eroding U.S. competitive advantages that took decades to develop, the analysis found.

It will be difficult for U.S. agriculture to find “meaningful” alternative export markets to make up losses in China because of regulatory hurdles, protectionist barriers and U.S. trade conflicts, the report added.

“The growing risk is that much of the market share abroad that U.S. agribusiness is losing to foreign competitors will be hard, if not impossible, to win back — even if current trade conflicts are resolved to the U.S. Government’s satisfaction,” the study concluded.

If Chinese customers fear more trade conflicts down the road and begin to question the United States as stable source for farm products, importers over time may “completely unwind complex relationships with U.S. suppliers,” the authors predicted.

Tensions between the United States and China have escalated ahead of a planned visit to Washington by senior Chinese officials later this week to resume negotiations on the trade dispute.

As recently as 2017, China purchased US$19.5 billion in U.S. agricultural products, accounting for 14 percent of farm exports, according to the study. But after the trade dispute erupted, farm exports to China dropped 53 percent in 2018 and were down another 8 percent for the first seven months of 2019.

China has compensated by increasing purchases of wheat and soybeans from neighboring Russia, which now hopes to double agricultural exports to China over 10 years. Australia and Brazil “significantly” increased their share of China’s cotton market, according to the report. Brazil raised pork exports to China and is moving to authorize dozens of new meat-processing facilities.

Likewise, Brazil has been slowly displacing the United States in soybean sales to China and is now the nation’s top supplier, the report found.

The analysis was done by six consultants at Boston Consulting Group, including Decker Walker, the firm’s global head of agribusiness, and Michael McAdoo, associate director of global trade at the firm.

(SD-Agencies)