More than a century after the first wave of U.S. cotton arrived in the American marketplace, the United States is still importing cotton, even though its domestic production is declining and its global market is dominated by China.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that the United Kingdom imported 10 million tonnes of cotton in 2017, the most since the early 1980s.

“It’s going to be a tough road for U.K. cotton to recover from the Brexit shock,” said Chris Lacey, chief executive of the National Farmers Union, a federation of small farmers.

In an interview, Lacey said it was a big problem that had a lot of ramifications.

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The United States has had a very successful history of manufacturing in the United Nations cotton region, but the U.A.E. has been one of the most dominant buyers of U