from this:
The other: How could it possibly make economic sense to ship a bulky product such as alfalfa hay 7,000 miles to China?
The answer, said Zhang, involves the enormous U.S.-China trade imbalance. Because China ships so many goods to West Coast ports,
without an 'enormous...trade imbalance' there wouldn't be all those empty container ships offering large discounts for China-bound freight. It's only because of the large discounts that exporting alfalfa becomes profitable. Foreign demand drives domestic price.
And now we are getting to the nut of the problem: how high do you think we should raise taxes on ourselves so that alfalfa farmers can charge us more for their product?