Six weeks away from this year's harvest, the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin's (GBW) Executive Director Jackie Fett says about half of last year's crop remains unsold. In contrast, they had sold about 90% of 2017's crops last spring, when the tariff on ginseng was still at 7.5%. Now, that number has risen to 41.5%.
Marathon County grows much of the nation's ginseng, and exports about 85% of that to China. But as the trade war continues, China's demand for ginseng is increasing with it, both in the tourists who buy it in China as well as manufacturers who use it in other products, GBW members said.
