Meat can be easily substituted, so I'd consider that discretionary spending. Furthermore, producing meat consumes many times the plants, than if humans directly consumed those plants. So in an emergency, just stop producing meat and you'll have plenty of plant-based food left.

I'd claim those subsidies worked fine then. The problem wasn't supply - It was delivery. There weren't enough drivers to move stuff around, so stuff didn't get moved around and shelves were empty. The supply chain's weakest link was delivery, so that broke. Exports to China used different infrastructure that wasn't as affected, so they still happened

The US doesn't subsidize meat production, your comment has no basis in fact.

> During the bad times, all that mattered is where more profit could be found.

The people in China need to eat too; the pork is going to be eaten. It is hard to understate how hard the Chinese have been working to provide goods, services and technologies to the rest of the world for the last 40-odd years. They've been quite clear the whole way through that one of the things they want in exchange for that is support feeding themselves.

Them buying American pork in a tough year is not some capitalist failure. This is what hard work and savings is supposed to get China - front of the line in a crisis. It would be grossly unfair to pay them then tell them that they've actually got monopoly money that can't even buy pork.