Dermot Hayes, professor, was interviewed in a March 11 Des Moines Register story, "Coronavirus dampens optimism that the U.S. deal with China will boost farm prices."
After battling over trade for nearly two years, the U.S. and China finalized their phase-one deal in January, outlining Beijing's plans to buy $200 billion of American goods over two years, including $32 billion in farm goods.
"It always looked like it was going to be challenging for China to meet their targets, but now it's even more challenging," said Dermot Hayes, an Iowa State University economist. "They have congestion at some of their ports, where ships are waiting to be unloaded," Hayes said. "That's bad for soybean exports, as well as beef and pork."
Hayes was also quoted in WQAD8 March 11:
"The biggest impact of all is that it looks like we're heading into recession. Since this all started prices for basically all our commodities have been tumbling."
Chad Hart, associate professor, was interviewed in the same story.
"The worst-case scenario for the Iowa economy and agriculture would be if the U.S. were to quarantine regions, as China has, to prevent the coronavirus' spread," said Chad Hart, an ISU economist. "The more quarantines or travel restrictions we would see, the bigger the hit on the economy," he said. "Even if you can sell goods to somebody, it doesn't mean that you can ship it to them. That's weighing on all the markets."