Link between Michigan water use, agriculture, and global trade
Recent debates over tariffs have focused primarily on economics, but they also demonstrate how trade decisions can carry unintended consequences for water use and environmental systems worldwide.
Jianguo “Jack” Liu, a sustainability scientist at Michigan State University and recent inductee into the National Academy of Sciences, has spent decades studying the connection between human and natural systems. His telecoupling framework explores socioeconomic and environmental relationships across distances, a perspective that helps to explain how Michigan’s water interacts with trade, climate, and resource use globally.
“Michigan produces a lot of agricultural products, and agriculture needs water,” Liu said. “That water may not be [directly] sent to other countries, but this is what we call virtual water.”
Virtual water is the water used to grow crops or produce goods. It is embedded in the final product and often goes unnoticed. When Michigan uses water to grow corn or produce timber, that water becomes part of a global supply chain. While it doesn’t physically leave the state, it travels indirectly through the goods that do. It’s part of a broader system linking local decisions to global outcomes, where mismanaging water in one place can affect supply chains, ecosystems, and even policy decisions elsewhere.
In early 2025, the Trump administration reimposed tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China—three countries that play a major role in Michigan’s agricultural trade. Canada and Mexico are the state’s top two destinations for food exports, while China remains a major market for Michigan crops, including soybeans, corn, and wheat.
Similar tariffs during Trump’s first term prompted a trade dispute with China that reduced U.S. agricultural exports, leading to steep losses for Michigan soybean growers. The latest round of tariffs has renewed those tensions. In response, Canada, Mexico, and China have enacted retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural exports.
Retaliation, and the risk it creates for Michigan’s food and water systems, is what concerns Liu.
“Michigan is closely related to other parts of the world, other parts of the country,” Liu said. “There are changes, like tariffs, that have a big impact on agricultural production. You produce food, and that uses water. But because of the tariffs, and retaliation from other countries, they don’t buy your products. That’s a big risk.”
Wasted water, labor, fertilizer, and energy used to grow crops that may never reach international markets can pose challenges for sustainability. It drains freshwater and fuel, strains farm laborers and soil, and weakens long-term efficiency, depleting resources that are already scarcer and less accessible than many realize.
Michigan is surrounded by one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater, the Great Lakes, but that doesn’t mean water is always within reach. The gap between availability and accessibility can complicate how water gets managed.
“Sometimes we have a misperception,” Liu said. “Even though we have a lot of water in the Great Lakes, accessing that water is not easy. For example, areas farther away from the lakes, like Lansing, don’t use water directly from Lake Michigan or Lake Ontario. You need infrastructure to get water to where it’s needed.”
Liu emphasized that issues of access make it risky to assume water is abundant in the Great Lakes region. Similar to food, where enough is produced globally to feed everyone, people still go hungry. With water, climate change and natural fluctuations create unpredictable shifts in water levels, disrupting ecosystems, infrastructure, and supply.
These shifting conditions, Liu said, are exactly what Michigan should be paying more attention to. Not just the amount of water, but how it’s behaving. He pointed to a growing pattern of extremes: drought in some areas, flooding in others. Michigan is already seeing both.
In March 2025, parts of Michigan experienced short-term drought conditions that were unusual for early spring—a season that typically sees steady moisture. In April, Detroit saw record-breaking rainfall, and Lansing reported widespread street and basement flooding. That pattern continued into May, with additional storms bringing heavy rainfall and flood warnings to communities across the state.
Liu explained that Michigan’s hydrological extremes exemplify a broader reality: water is becoming increasingly difficult to manage, with no real alternatives.
“Water will be one of the biggest challenges,” Liu said. “Even more difficult than energy. With energy, you have alternatives, solar, wind, and so on. But with water, you don’t have that option.”
Water’s connection to land, energy, people, and ecosystems is what makes it challenging, Liu said. That’s why he approaches his research through telecoupling, and urges others to do the same.
Students and early-career researchers, he noted, are uniquely positioned to take on these challenges. With more interdisciplinary training, they’re entering the field better equipped to think across systems like ecology, sociology, and economics.
“As the world becomes more connected,” Liu explained. “You have to consider how other places affect this place [Michigan], and how Michigan affects other places as well. These feedback loops are hard to study and take time to see, but they matter.”
Read the story in MSU Water Alliance.
