Stars, Stripes, & Supply Chains

America imports more of its food than we think

Things are heating up in Europe and I don’t mean just in terms of temperature, although that is happening too.

The heatwave that has gripped Western Europe for the past few weeks has led to wildfires, closure of tourist spots, and most tragically, estimated deaths of 2,300 people across 12 cities.

Political temperature is rising too, with the European Commission coming under withering criticism for their budget proposals which include slashing farming subsidies as well as environmental and climate measures.

I guess European policymakers live on an alternate continent than the rest of us, where it isn’t the fastest warming one on the planet. I wrote this last year, and it still holds.

The exact details of the budget are still hazy (and very recent), so I hope to do a round-up of the developments once I’ve digested them and more information becomes available.

So this week I’m turning to the U.S. and an interesting new analysis that further adds to the evidence already piling up that recent food- and agri-related policy decisions have little to do with helping ordinary people.

Over the past 10 years, the United States’ reliance on imported foods has increased significantly, with the country now importing a sizeable amount of the staples that are synonymous with its Independence Day celebrations, according to a new analysis from Rethink Trade.

America is now a net importer of foods, with its purchase of fruit, seafood, vegetables, beverages, and cereal preparations, outpacing the growth of its exports, to the tune of $58.7 billion.

The findings raise further questions about the impact on ordinary people from the current U.S. administration’s flagship policies around food and agriculture: the unpredictable nature and arbitrary levels of tariffs being levelled at trade partners, the immigration raids that are risking the nation’s food supply, and Trump’s megabill which rewards mega farms.

There is also a larger concern around supply chain resiliency, especially in light of the disruptions we saw in the COVID-19 pandemic, Katie Hettinga, Rethink Trade’s Policy Analyst who crunched the numbers, told me in an interview.

Rethink Trade is a programme of the American Economic Liberties Project, an advocacy group working to counter concentrated corporate power.

“Looking at the current state of affairs and where we’re getting our food from is more important than ever as we're going through these tariff negotiations,” she said.

“Where are our grocery stores going to be buying their products? How are the food processors and the distributors going to get food products to consumers? As these tariff rates are constantly changing or not changing, the implication is that we really should be considering food and trade policy as more intertwined.”

I also want to add that these concerns will only grow as the tangible impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity become more pronounced.

The analysis’ comparison of import and export data for six ingredients - beef, potatoes, tomatoes, watermelons, ketchup, and beer - that are part of the Fourth of July barbecues provide a vivid example of the U.S.’ reliance on its trade partners.

I’m sharing only four because of space, so please check out the original source.

Katie’s data (a deficit of $58.7 billion) also differs from the official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report that estimated the trade deficit in farm goods will reach a record $49.5 billion this fiscal year. This is a gap of over $9 billion.

That’s mainly due to a difference in methodology. Rethink Trade includes foods that do not come under the USDA definition of agricultural products. The USDA’s methodology, based on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) definition, excludes “seafood and fish products, which is a major category that the United States not only eats, but also imports just a ton of”, said Katie.

Rethink Trade also excluded things that are inedible, like fibre and forestry products, animal feed, and industrial oils.

“Many of the foods that we're importing now are value-added things. For example, looking at our top import categories, one of the biggest jumps is in cereals preparations, which is this large category that is processed foods made out of cereals and grains,” said Katie.

“Meanwhile, we are continuing to export primarily oil seeds and cereals, but these commodities don't directly go into human food that can be processed elsewhere. We're not really taking care of that processing on our own any more.”

Errol Schweizer, a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), writer, and former Whole Foods executive, said this is the consequences of decades of economic policies that have pushed to outsource and offshore manufacturing and production, including of food.

“Now we're not only importing products that we can't grow here, but we're also importing products that we ostensibly could be growing, producing, manufacturing here, and that's typically driven by companies seeking lower labour costs and lower environmental regulations, and just in general, lower costs of doing business overseas, so that they can reap the difference in increased profits.”

It’s the System, Stupid!

The word ‘deficit’ seems to scare even the most level-headed amongst us. Perhaps it’s our education systems that have taught us that anything less than a positive number is a bad one. Perhaps it’s the competitive human nature that we must always be “winning” against the other person.

Whatever it is, trade deficits don’t mean one side is losing against the other. Many column inches have been used to educate us on this issue, some dating back to 1990, and others a little more recent, but it seems we are none the wiser.

“Food and trade deficit is not necessarily a scorecard that we can say, “Oh, we're failing”,” said Katie.

“The food trade deficit in combination with outcomes for smaller farmers, the fact that we are losing thousands of farms, that there is growing concentrated corporate power throughout the trade system, and that there are rising food prices that make access to healthy foods impossible for a lot of communities across the country… is important. Those are markers both of success and also where our policy may be failing smaller farmers, smaller processors and also U.S. consumers.”

Besides, there are very few countries in the world that can be fully self-sufficient when it comes to food production. A recent paper in Nature found that out of 186 countries, only Guyana achieves self-sufficiency for all seven food groups that are essential for a healthy diet.

“There are some things that we are always going to be importers of. We can't produce the amount of coffee or bananas or tropical fruits there is demand for in the United States. So it makes sense that we import a lot of our fruits and tree nuts,” said Katie.

Here, I’d like to take a moment to share with you this fascinating exchange between Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Pennsylvania Representative Madeleine Dean about building bananas in America. I kid you not.

I’d also like to share an interesting Bluesky post on America’s diet and why we should care about supply chains.

So yeah, trade deficits in itself are not bad, and we need trade to feed ourselves and each other. But we also need that trade to be fair.

“You need actual trade agreements that prioritise equity and sustainability and eliminate child labour and trafficking and slavery, and that ensure price parity so growers can make a margin and pay their workers well, and that they're required to pay their workers a living wage. I mean, that should all be what is actually in trade agreements,” said Errol.

That said, overreliance on food imports carries risks, a reality very familiar to countries that once depended heavily on Ukraine for grain.

“Since we are living in an era of very uncertain trade policy, how might that be affected if more than half of the fruits and tree nuts and something like 80% of the seafood that we eat is coming from abroad?” asked Katie.

In the analysis, she wrote:

“The current trade system and its impact on agricultural trade requires a deep rethink. Existing trade deals tolerate export subsidies that promote a few large global monopolists in the agricultural trading and processing sectors to the detriment of farmers and consumers around the world. Existing rules undermine supply management, domestic promotion of local food production and smaller-scale farming, and safety nets for small farmers.”

Finding a Way Out

Katie also wrote in the analysis that “we cannot export our way out of this hole, contrary to Big Ag claims that new trade agreements will fix the deficit”.

Agricultural commodity lobbyists argue that the solution to the growing food trade deficit is to expand market access and boost U.S. exports. But as Katie pointed out, exports have already been rising steadily over the past decade.

The problem is, imports have been growing even faster, so simply ramping up exports isn’t exactly a workable fix.

Besides, trying to expand exports through trade negotiations or forcing import quotas on other countries ignore the fact that smaller US farmers are struggling and not receiving the support they need, she added.

What all this means is that the tariffs, the frightening - and deadly - immigration raids, and the tax cuts for the rich that this administration is prescribing, will do very little to address the roots of the problem.

In fact, the dual pressures of the tariffs aimed at reducing imports and the deportation of a key segment of the agricultural workforce are likely to worsen food prices as well as food production. Perhaps we all know that already but I feel the need to keep repeating that these aren’t solutions.

For Errol, he sees the “shock and awe with the tariffs” as about the current President, his family, and his businesses, looking to benefit from these decisions.

“The last several administrations have been ideologically committed to the neoliberal project of offshoring production, reducing labour costs, increasing profits, increasing profitability of manufacturers and food processors, as well as, of course, the investors and shareholders that own all the publicly traded companies.”

With Trump, though, it’s about personal benefits, albeit while feeding on actual fears.

“He's feeding on an actual economic crisis in this country. But with him, it’a always a bait and switch, a misdirection, and that's what I call the MAHA movement. His solutions actually double down on everything that's making things worse.”

“They're cutting all this funding for local food systems and regional food business centres. They're cutting funding for women or people of colour owned farms. They're specifically increasing subsidies for large scale, monocrop, GMO industrial farms primarily owned either by white families or by institutional investors.”

What the government should be looking at is addressing the power of Big Ag and the severe concentration in the foods sector, said the analysis from Rethink Trade.

“We're seeing more and more consolidation in the agricultural supply chain at every single level, all the way from the growers, the processors, to the distributors. Farmers get lower prices at the farm gate, these massive agri-corporations are able to take more of a share, and then there's still higher prices for consumers at the end of the line,” Katie told me.

A 2023 report from Rethink Trade gives an idea of corporate power in one aspect of American policy: trade deals.

Of the nearly 500 official U.S. trade advisors, 84% represent business interests in the form of corporations, corporate trade associations, small and medium-sized enterprises, agribusiness promotion boards, and professional trade associations.

This access allows them to continue making policies that benefits them and their employers. Small farmers and smaller and mid-sized businesses, meanwhile, have far less representation and influence in the trade policymaking space, said Katie.

“These corporate powers have more influence on our daily lives than folks realise.”

Thin’s Pickings

1. Knives, bullets and thieves: the quest for food in Gaza - NPR

   The images and the text in this story, from NRP’s producer in the Gaza Strip, Anas Baba, are upsetting. Necessarily so.

   So please don’t skip this or look away. Please read it and share.

2. The Enduring Fantasy of “Feeding the World” - Spectre

   Interesting piece by four members of the Agroecology Research-Action Collective responding to Michael Grunwald’s position that industrial agriculture and further productivity is the answer to stave off global hunger. It also has links to last week’s issue.

   The authors argue that this narrative emerges “from the old colonial-capitalist roots of economic and epistemic domination: a hubristic faith in progress, the patronisation of a distant other in need of aid, and the justification of colonial control over land and labour” and gave examples of how productivism has failed to curb hunger or protect ecosystems.

   “The enduring fantasy of feeding the world persists because it is convenient to the status quo. It weaponises global hunger to silence the voices of agrarian change, laundering the horrors of the industrial food system into a normative (yet empty) good of “feeding the hungry” through increased production.”

3. Europe’s Leaders Are Doing Something Disastrous - The New York Times

   Op-ed by David Broder on European leaders’ pullback from climate measures that are necessary to keep their citizens alive.

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