Exporters in manufacturing-heavy states such as Alabama, South Carolina
and Kentucky are among those that stand to lose the most from a
protracted trade war with China, according to a U.S. News analysis of
government trade data that suggests newly erected trade barriers into
the Chinese market could stifle industries shipping billions of dollars
of goods into Asia's largest economy each year.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the U.S. exported nearly $130
billion in commodities to China last year, an increase of nearly $14
billion from 2016's trade total. Newly erected tariffs on some of those
goods – a byproduct of a tit-for-tat trade conflict that's developed
between President Donald Trump's administration and members of Chinese
President Xi Jinping's regime – stand to raise prices on U.S. exports,
with
farmers and
manufacturers, in particular, concerned about their products getting priced out of the world's second-largest economy.
"What
is clear is that we are in a trade war," Daniel Ikenson, director of
the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies,
said in a statement last week. "With very little substantive dialogue
underway between the governments, matters are likely to get much worse
before they get better."
The average U.S. state shipped 9 percent of its total commodity exports
to China in 2017 – valued at an average of $2.5 billion. Washington,
California and Texas led the way in China exports, each shipping more
than $16 billion in goods to the country in 2017.
Read more: Southern states among hardest hit by China tariffs
