US: Chinese Tariffs And Bad Weather Continue To Hammer North Carolina’s Tobacco Farmers

Source from:  Raleigh News & Observer 05/22/2019

With tariffs from China hitting their export market, a spate of bad weather hurting crop production and labor becoming harder to find, North Carolina tobacco farmers have faced their share of adversity in the past few years.

If things continue as they are, the state’s farmers are expected to plant the smallest tobacco crop since before World War II, Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau, told The News & Observer.

And relief doesn’t appear to be on the horizon, as a simmering trade war between the U.S. and China continues to escalate and a strong U.S. dollar has made it cheaper to buy tobacco from other countries.

In the past month, President Donald Trump raised tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports to as much as 25%, as he attempts to win a better trade deal between the two countries. In response, China announced its own plans to increase tariffs to as high as 25% on about $60 billion worth of U.S. goods starting in June.