Cuts, Tariffs Sting Loyal Trump Farmers

BY KRISTINA PETERSON

In January, the year ahead for Jim Hartman, a North Carolina farmer, was looking bright.

He planned to replace his 40-year-old forklift, and to finish building a new packing and processing facility for the 18,000 pounds of honey he harvests every year. And he had his eyes on another machine that could parcel honey into packets for school meals.

Then, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced it was phasing out two programs used to buy local produce for food banks and schools, costing him an estimated $100,000 in revenue. The agency has also frozen another roughly $20,000 he expected to get from conservation programs and a Biden-era climate project.

“Stuff like this is pushing me left,” said Hartman, an Army veteran and lifelong Republican who voted for Trump in November.

In two months, the Trump administration has injected uncertainty into agriculture, an industry already struggling with low prices, high expenses and unpredictable—and at times, destructive—weather.

Now, farmers—traditionally a key block of support for Trump—are also contending with a host of other challenges. USDA and foreign-aid funding is frozen or in limbo. Deportations are expected to squeeze an already tight agricultural- labor market. Tariffs are being aimed at the industry’s main trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China.

Trump has said he would announce new tariffs on April 2, or “Liberation Day” as he calls it, leaving farmers bracing for the possibility of another crippling trade war. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there would be no exemptions for farmers. “It’s hitting us on all fronts,” said Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association and a soy farmer in Magnolia, Ky. “You’re talking about the potential of a flat-out crisis in rural America and the farm economy.”

A USDA spokesperson said the agency was reining in Biden- era spending used to pursue a liberal agenda.

Just over half of farmers, 54%, said they didn’t support Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool, according to a poll of nearly 3,000 farmers conducted in March by Ag-Web, an agricultural-news website.

Farmers accustomed to dealing with uncertainty from the weather and the markets said the federal government, which spends tens of billions of dollars to support them each year, usually helps them offset that instability.

Even before Trump took office, weaker prices and higher costs were such a drag that Congress approved $10 billion in new aid, and USDA began distributing it in March.

But the Trump administration’s decision to freeze swaths of other federal funding has continued to inflict pain. Michael Protas, who grows vegetables on his farm in Dickerson, Md., said he borrowed around $100,000 to install a new solar-panel system, with the expectation USDA would reimburse half of it through a Biden-era program, but is still waiting on the funds.

“The one variable I had never put on my bingo card as an issue is a contract with the federal government,” he said.

Under the Biden administration, USDA set up a $3 billion fund and Congress authorized another $20 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act to support popular sustainable agricultural programs, incentivizing farmers to plant cover crops and practice no-till farming. The new administration froze much of that funding, though farmers said some had been restored.

Trump “will ensure farmers have the support they need to feed the world,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, adding that the administration was working to expand markets for U.S. farmers.

Trump’s appetite for tariffs in particular has many in rural America nervous.

“There’s huge potential for damage,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from the export-heavy Washington state. “We can only eat so many apples domestically. We have to have these foreign markets in order to exist.”

Trump’s first trade war led to more than $27 billion in losses of agricultural exports, according to USDA research. Soybeans accounted for nearly 71% of that. In response, China started importing more soybeans from Brazil, and U.S. soybean farmers have yet to regain their market share, according to Ragland of the soybean association.

Trump sent about $23 billion to compensate farmers at the time, and farmers and lawmakers expect Trump would likely provide relief again in the event of a protracted trade fight.

Trump’s actions during his second term have already led other countries to impose their own retaliatory tariffs on roughly $27 billion of agricultural exports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group representing farmers and ranchers. Farmers could also get squeezed by tariffs on imports, including potash, a key component of fertilizer, and steel and aluminum, which are used in farm equipment.

“Listen, real change takes disruption,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Fox Business Network. “I am talking to farmers every single day. They know that the president has their back.”