Researchers have combed the historical literature and warned about the impacts of COVID-19 but not all the predictions have proved accurate. As countries imposed travel bans, the WTO warned of broken supply chains. Now it says agriculture has fared better than industry with farm exports up 2.5 percent in the first half of 2020.  The International Food Policy Research Institute lamented that food exports from developing countries would decline, yet U.S. food imports from developing countries have increased, while declining from the rich countries (see graph below). The latter may be the result of trade war policies, or changes in consumption for consumer-oriented foods. Imports of fruit and vegetable juices declined except orange juice...

TAGS – North America, Macroeconomics