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Russell Clark's avatar

All true. My question is how does it make sense for a country with only 20% of US per capita GDP to have higher food prices? And if does make sense - what does it mean going forward. Japan was the biggest market for US pork for a long time, but that happened when Japan became rich....

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aaronyfu's avatar

Commodities don’t care about “what makes sense” in terms of relative GDP. They import pork, so they need to have a higher price to incent trade flows. From a demand perspective, pork is a much higher percent of their protein diet.

When the China herd is rebuilt, some of the “excess” demand will retreat, but I have a much harder time seeing cultural norms about food change en masse.

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