Chapter 10: Agri-Food Trade Between the United States and Russia: From Divergence to Irrelevance

Abstract

This chapter investigates the impact of political relations on U.S. food exports to the Soviet Union and Russia. The chapter finds that during the Cold War, political relations between the United States and Russia and agricultural trade were divergent, which means that food trade was not much affected by poor relations. In the post-Soviet period, the relationship between politics and agricultural exports has become convergent, which means that political relations and U.S. exports move in the same direction. With Putin in office, U.S. agricultural exports have fallen into irrelevance, a trend that predates Russia’s 2014 food embargo against the West.