the conflict also squeezed us retail manufacturing and construction companies that had to pay more for metal and other goods chicago the uschina trade war resulted in billions of dollars of losses for both sides in 2018 hitting industries including autos technology and above all agriculture broad pain from trade tariffs outlined by several economists shows that while specialised industries including us soybean crushing benefited from the dispute it had an overall detrimental impact on both of the worlds two largest economies the losses may give us president donald trump and his chinese counterpart xi jinping motivation to resolve their trade differences before a march 2 deadline although talks between the economic superpowers could still devolve advt the us and chinese economies each lose about 29 billion annually due to beijings tariffs on soybeans corn wheat and sorghum alone said purdue university agricultural economist wally tyner disrupted agricultural trade hurt both sides particularly hard because china is the worlds biggest soybean importer and last year relied on the united states for 12 billion worth of the oilseed china has mostly been buying soy from brazil since imposing a 25 percent tariff on american soybeans in july in retaliation for us tariffs on chinese goods the surge in demand pushed brazilian soy premiums to a record over us soy futures in chicago in an example of the trade war reducing sales for us exporters and raising costs for chinese importers its something thats crying for a resolution tyner said its a loselose for both the united states and china total us agricultural export shipments to china for the first 10 months of 2018 fell by 42 percent from a year earlier to about 83 billion according to the us department of agriculture the most actively traded soybean futures contract averaged 875 per bushel from july to december 2018 down from an average of 976 during the same period a year earlier as of dec 28 futures in the last month of the year were averaging 89512 a bushel that was down from 96134 for all of december last year advt to compensate suffering farmers the us government has allocated about 11 billion to direct payments and buying agricultural goods for government food programs after consulting economists including tyner in north dakota which exports crops to china through ports in the pacific northwest soy farmers face at least 280 million in losses because of beijings tariffs said mark watne president of the north dakota farmers union you could almost put another 100 million on top of this because all commodity prices are down and that affects north dakota farmers indirectly watne said chinas tariffs improved margins for us soy crushers such as archer daniels midland co by leaving plentiful supplies of cheap soybeans on the domestic market chinese soybean mills on the other hand frontloaded soy purchases ahead of the tariffs this led to an oversupply that reduced chinese processing margins and led factories this summer to make the biggest cuts