Trade Wars and the Farm Economy With Bill Ridley, Ph.D.

William Ridley, Ph.D. https://ace.illinois.edu/directory/wridley

William Ridley, Ph.D. on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Qjox4QIAAAAJ&hl=en

Today’s episode is timely and thought provoking in my opinion. The farm economy is struggling again this year, and while there’s no one cause for all of that struggle, exports certainly play a role. A major role. 

I’m very pleased to welcome Dr. Bill Ridley onto the show. Bill is an international economist studying global markets and trade policy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  His research explores pressing market and policy issues relating to international agricultural trade, economic integration, trade disputes, and the implications of globalization for the environment and natural resource use.

I wanted to bring Bill on the show to ask about the implications of tariffs and trade disputes for the farm economy, his perspective on the current trade relationship with China, his work on the virtual water trade which is an interesting concept measuring how much domestic water gets used to export food out of the country, and his thoughts on the path forward from here. If you’re hoping for a rosey picture of how this all plays out, I’ll warn you now - you may be disappointed. But it’s certainly an important topic to be thinking deeply about how this impacts your business for all of us in agriculture.