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Students with the University of Kansas' Trade War Lab are learning about the United States-China trade conflict as history unfolds.
University of Kansas political science assistant professor Jack Zhang directs the lab, which focuses on trade war impacts on the heartland of the U.S.
Tim Cichanowicz is a team lead for the Trade War Lab, and has spent the last three and a half years researching under the direction of Zhang.
"We're watching the news, and we're seeing all this stuff unfolding," Cichanowicz, a PhD candidate of political science at KU, said. "For many people, this is the first time they're tuning in, but this isn't exactly new, right?"
The lab was established in 2018, when President Donald Trump's first administration raised tariffs on China. The conflict looks different in 2025.
"It's been kind of exhausting, actually, to try to follow this and incorporate it into course materials in real time because things are happening so quickly," Zhang said.
Wednesday morning, Trump imposed a 104% tariff on China. By the afternoon, the state of U.S. tariffs changed again.
"The tariff on China will now go up to 125% because China imprudently decided to retaliate against the United States," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
China announced it would hike its tariffs on U.S. goods from 34% to 84%.
Zhang said the U.S. is in unprecedented territory with tariffs — on average — reaching a 100-year high.
"This rate of escalation and the impact it's going to have on U.S. consumers and businesses is going to be profound," Zhang said.
Zhang says Kansas will be most impacted by potential tariffs on Mexico and Canada. But, China is the state's fourth-largest market, and Zhang says farmers will feel the impact.
"The big thing is soybeans," he said.
Kansas ranks 8th in the United States for agricultural exports, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In 2022, its third-largest agricultural export was soybeans at $1.2 billion.
There are 12,000 soybean farmers in Kansas, according to the Kansas Soybean Association.
"We have a lot of good crop land here and grow a lot of soybeans," Zhang said. "That is going to be prohibitively expensive for U.S. to sell directly to China now, so China's going to source from a place like Brazil. So, that will hit soybean farmers in the state."
While industries across the board and consumers are bracing for the impacts of tariffs, Zhang's students are learning as history unfolds.
"Watching this in real-time, it's exciting for the lab, we have new questions to look at," Cichanowicz said.
The lab team works to ensure its research findings are publicly available.
"I think there's urgency there to share the effects of these tariffs with the public in a way they understand," Charlie Andrade, a lab student who runs its media relations, said.
Amid the uncertainty of the trade war, the lab team continues its research and works to provide answers.
"What we're trying to do is take away any biases and look at it objectively and what's going on, because people want to know that," Cichanowicz said. "Is Christmas going to be more expensive for families?"
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