KANSAS CITY — Jan. 4, 1980, was a day that changed the trajectory of the US wheat economy.

Josh Sosland Portrait.Josh Sosland, editor of Milling & Baking News.
Source: Sosland Publishing Co. 

As the legacy of the late President Jimmy Carter is recalled in the wake of his death Dec. 29, an event 45 years ago likely popped into the minds of veteran and retired grain, milling and baking executives. Numerous actions by the Carter administration are viewed favorably in retrospect, including negotiating the Camp David accords, deregulating the railroads and airlines and naming Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve. He also is remembered for mishaps including the Iran hostage crisis, raging inflation and economic “malaise,” circumstances contributing to his November 1980 defeat by Ronald Reagan.

Few, if any, of the initiatives taken during the Carter presidency were as universally derided as his January 1980 decision to embargo sales of grain to the USSR in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan less than two weeks earlier.

The action was unexpected. Speculation had arisen about whether an embargo was under consideration months earlier after the discovery of a brigade from the USSR in Cuba, but the administration’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was dismissive, equating an embargo to “shooting oneself in the foot” and stating flatly, “The US does not do that.”

An editorial in this publication immediately after the embargo was announced challenged whether the move was “the proper or even an effective response to the Soviet Union’s reckless attack,” adding realistically, “The grain export embargo will not cause the Kremlin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.”

Coming less than 10 years after the USSR emerged suddenly and dramatically as the leading buyer of grain globally (US wheat exports surged 128% from 1969-70 to 1979-80), the long-term consequences of the action were immediately understood.

“It is obvious that the carefully cultivated market potential of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc nations has been diminished; that America’s credibility with other countries fearful of doing something to displease the US president has been sorely lessened; that decades of effort have been brushed aside in knee-jerk fashion,” the editorial continued. “In the extreme, the consequence could not just be a jarring halt to the rising trend in US grain exports, but a downward slide… In the long run, the embargo may lead to crop expansion in nations which compete with the US and in importing countries, which may now decide to devote resources to stimulating production.”

The dire predictions came to pass, and the fall of the United States as the global leader in wheat exports was dramatic.

The year of the embargo, US wheat exports totaled 37.4 million tonnes, accounting for 40% of the global trade total. About 10 years later, in 1990-91, the United States exported 29 million tonnes of wheat, 26% of the global total (112 million tonnes). For the current year of 2024-25, US exports are projected at 23 million tonnes, 11% of the global total (215 million tonnes).

That Carter’s decision to punish the USSR by banning grain sales was ill-considered is as clear in 2025 as it was in 1980. It was not the embargo that prompted the Soviet Union withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988-89. Instead, it was a relentless guerilla campaign waged by the mujahideen.

At the same time, it is oversimplistic to suggest the United States would have anything close to a 40% share of global wheat trade had Carter resisted the temptation to declare an embargo. Many forces have been at play in the intervening years. For instance, the folly of the USSR’s decision to invade Afghanistan, widely viewed as a major factor precipitating the Soviet Union’s collapse, looms as foundational to the radical realignment of export wheat leaders over the last 40 years. It was only with the end of the USSR that Russia and Ukraine were able to begin to reach their potential in grain production and emerge as global leaders in wheat exports, further displacing the United States.

Still, the sad tale of the Carter embargo stands as an enduring and powerful reminder of the ineffectiveness of grain embargoes as a policy tool.