America Has Gotten Trade Backward for Decades

Dave Nuss's pickup rumbled down the dirt road, dark, rich soil turned up in fields on either side. The 69-year-old farmer gestured to one field then another, commenting on the fortunes of each crop this year. Then he stopped and looked across an irrigation ditch. A trio of sheds — one green, one tan, one gray — loomed in the distance.

It was the former site of his asparagus operation. Once booming, now long since bust.

"We lost all our customers," Nuss said...