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Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the White House is being watched closely by farmers in America. They've lost billions in sales to China, as President Trump has imposed tariffs on Chinese goods coming to the U.S. South Dakota Public Broadcasting's Jackson Dircks reports from a farm outside Sioux Falls.
JACKSON DIRCKS, BYLINE: A delegation from the Asia Society walks around a soybean farm as part of a week long visit in South Dakota. Yangyang Cheng is a senior fellow with the organization dedicated to understanding Asia and its role in the world.
YANGYANG CHENG: I think people who are used to conversations that happen on the coastal big cities or between Washington and Beijing may not necessarily realize, like, a lot of these issues are manifesting a very concrete material way here in Sioux Falls.
DIRCKS: Farmowner Jeff Thompson knows all about that. About 30% of all soybeans grown in South Dakota are sold to China, or at least they were. Last year, China stopped buying U.S. soybeans in response to President Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods. Thompson's hopes for Trump and Xi's meeting in Washington this week...
JEFF THOMPSON: Well, we just need to keep dialect going and keep it - things open and keep the markets open, you know, so we can move the products both ways, you know?
DIRCKS: Late last year, Trump announced a $12 billion assistance package for farmers being hurt by China's retaliation. Thompson says that helped but didn't backfill everyone's losses. And...
THOMPSON: Us as farmers, we'd rather see the market system work. You know, we don't like the allusion that the handouts are going out. We need the money to, you know, survive.
DIRCKS: China has since promised to resume buying American soybeans but fewer than they did before Trump's first term. Thompson, who's involved with a state organization that promotes the crop, says the unpredictability has been difficult.
THOMPSON: It's been different. You know, would be nice to just get a normal - the whole world has changed so much in the last number of years that it's kind of hard to - we don't know what a normal is anymore, sometimes. You know, we value China's business, you know?
DIRCKS: Trump won South Dakota by 60% the last three elections. Farmers here are generally reluctant to criticize him. But Kevin Scott, a farmer and executive director of the state Soybean Association, says Trump's policies are the reason the Chinese market has been so disruptive.
KEVIN SCOTT: We had two years, like you say, where they were not buying a lot of beans, and it's not because the people that were processing them didn't want them. It was government relations that were not great.
DIRCKS: Scott is hopeful Xi's visit to the U.S. this week will bring good news because selling overseas is crucial to farmers here.
SCOTT: Half of our income comes from that trade. And so, you know, we're always working on that. But we do travel to a lot of countries and trying to diversify our trade so that there are other options if that occurs in the future. And there are other options, but we've had a long time of building a relationship with China.
DIRCKS: Back on Jeff Thompson's farm, the Asia Society delegation wraps up its visit. Its goal is to help Americans and Asian countries understand one another and cooperate. Fellow Yangyang Cheng says a takeaway from this visit for her is the pride of American farmers.
CHENG: This place is also connected with the rest of the world, and there is great pride in being able to work one's own land and then feed the world.
DIRCKS: For NPR News, I'm Jackson Dircks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
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