Nearly 635 million kilograms of American cheese are in cold storage in the United States. That’s roughly 1.8 kilos of cheese for every American, the highest amount since record-keeping began in 1917.
And that amount could go higher as the two main US dairy states – California and Wisconsin – deal with the impact of retaliatory tariffs on dairy products from Mexico and China.
On 5 July, Mexico and China put tariffs on $986 million worth of US dairy exports－$408 million worth of cheese to China and $578 million worth of dairy products to Mexico－as retaliation for the Trump administration’s tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum. US dairy exports totaled $5.5 billion last year, including $1.3 billion to Mexico alone, according to the US Agriculture Department.