In October 2025 at the peak of the soybean harvest and as tensions in U.S.-China trade relations rose I spent a day in Muscatine, Iowa, on assignment for Der Spiegel. Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited muscatine twice, first in 1985 and later in 2012. I photographed agriculture industry infrastructure on the Mississippi River town’s waterfront, spent time with farmers as they combined soybean fields, and retraced Xi’s two visits to Muscatine, photographing places he stayed and people with whom he met.