How China weaponized soybeans to squeeze U.S. farmers — and spite TrumpIt's all about pressure before a meeting. Nothing happened before that?
For Beijing, halting U.S. soybean imports has been an easy and relatively cost-free way to pile pressure on Trump ahead of a planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month.We do get this in the second paragraph:
This year, however, Chinese importers aren’t buying. In retaliation for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Beijing has cut off Midwestern farmers from their largest and most lucrative overseas customer: China accounted for half — or $12.6 billion — of U.S. soybean exports last year.But otherwise there's little sense that, well, DONALD TRUMP STARTED IT. Half a sentence in the entire piece.
It is remarkable, especially for those of us who grew up in the era of Globollocks and The World Is Flat, that the collective media response to Donald Trump blowing up the world's free trade regime has been a very loud silence.