China used to buy a few percent of our farm output, mostly concentrated in a few commodities. Their biggest purchases were always for soybeans, to feed the largest stocks of hogs in the world. This year, their pork production has been devastated by disease, dropping their feed requirements in half.
Commodity products (Ag and oil/gas) are the main things that China imports from us, that they are able to easily substitute. So they are the areas where real retaliation occurred. In other areas, they put small tariffs, and often subsidized the costs to their companies, making their tariffs largely a sham.
Just as it is easier to find alternative suppliers of commodity products, it is also easier to find alternative customers for them. Ten cents cheaper, and our product can sell elsewhere, to a significant degree.
It’s taking a bit more than 10 cents cheaper, judging by commodities prices generally.
IIRC(?), China imported about half their hog feed from the US, right? So, with half their hogs dead (and no end in sight), they really don’t need to import feed from us now, anyway...
I do have another, “bigger” question, though. Are USDA’s estimates of AG exports dependent on both projected export quantity AND price? That would seem to me to be the only sensible way to make such estimates.
If yes, then it seems to me that a drop in demand is a double whammy. We export less (and I should note here that this Swine Fever is affecting quite a number of countries in addition to China). Additionally, assuming no major grain harvest / supply problems (I also note that despite reduced acreage in the US for 2019, due to flooding and, I suspect, farmers’ awareness of the coming demand problems, worldwide supplies are looking fairly good), then oversupply will tend to drop prices. Add in a weak global economy. It usually doesn’t take much of an oversupply to drop prices substantially. I would not be surprised if this price drop due to what is effectively a supply glut affects the total $ value of US grain exports (to say nothing of the total $ value of US grain sales, export AND domestic) considerably more than just the reduction in bushels exported.
So, you are correct in saying (Ag) commodities are a global market, but, global demand vs. supply is down. That is what is really driving our reduced Ag exports. The “trade war” may not even affect commodity prices by the 10 cents you mention, when the overall picture is taken into account. In a global market it is, in one word, irrelevant.
Now, where I may disagree with you a bit is that if the Chinese economy were to collapse, then the repercussions of that (probable global recession) could hurt us a lot. So, I don’t think we want to “wreck” (my word) China. We just need them to fear it enough to straighten out.