In a recent edition of his must-read Unleash Prosperity Hotline, our friend Stephen Moore alerted us to another troubling data point about the Biden economy. New USDA data as first
reported by Fox News, indicates that for the first time in decades, the U.S. is now buying more food from the rest of the world than the amount of our domestic agriculture products that are sold abroad. In 2022 the U.S. is expected to end the year with a small net IMPORTER of food. If present trends continue, by 2032 the U.S. is expected to run a $75 billion annual agriculture trade DEFICIT.
You can sign-up for Steve’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline through this link, there’s no charge and you will get Stephen Moore’s analysis or economic and political trends straight to your in box.
And what a difference a year of Joe Biden as President has made.
In 2021 the American agricultural industry posted its highest annual export levels ever recorded. The final 2021 trade data published by the Department of Commerce on February 8, 2022 showed that exports of U.S. farm and food products to the world totaled $177 billion and the March 2022 FDA data pegged imports at almost $167 billion.
In one short year that $10 billion surplus has been wiped out.
For at least the last half-century America was the breadbasket of the world. We have by far the most productive Farmers and much of the world’s most bountiful farmland with massive livestock. We have fed the world.
For decades, reported Agriculture.com, ag exports turned a reliable surplus in a U.S. balance of trade that routinely ran an overall deficit, although there were small deficits on the ag ledger in fiscal 2019 and 2020. They got little notice. Exports provide 20¢ or more of each $1 of farm income, so the farm sector avidly follows export data. The United States is the largest agricultural exporter in the world. The productive capacity of U.S. agriculture often is regarded, at least in the industry, as a safeguard against domestic hunger and a cornucopia for less-fortunate nations.
Now, not so much.
As Stephen Moore noted, there are many disturbing reasons for this development, but one major one is rising energy costs during the Biden years here at home. So, we are now in the red on energy and food – which under Trump were major American exports. Good going, Joe!
inflation
Joe Biden economy
Bidenflation
fuel prices
transportation prices
wholesale prices
cost of living
net food importer