As the U.S. now heads into the Fall harvest season, the impacts of Trump’s tariffs are being more clearly seen, where farmers all across the U.S. are sounding the alarm about the collapse of our agricultural system, with one out of every three farms going out of business in certain parts of the country.
What we are seeing this Fall in the U.S. are the effects of a mass loss of farm labor due to deportations, increased prices on farm equipment and other farm materials that are mostly imported (like parts for John Deere tractors), and of course the loss of the China market, the country where most U.S. farm products have been exported to in past years.
Ohio family farmers describe life under Trump tariffs: ‘We’re in a hell of a mess here.’
“We’re in a hell of a mess here,” said Ohio farmer Chris Gibbs as he worked on his combine at the start of harvest season.
“A severe cash flow mess,” he sighed. “A working capital mess.”
Gibbs, who farms more than 500 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa hay in Shelby County, along with a 90-head cow-calf operation, described the five-alarm fire raging in the farming community from Trump’s blanket tariffs.
Some growers have called the fallout from his chaotic trade war, and the reciprocal tariffs it provoked, a “farmageddon” that could ruin what made rural America great.
It’s that bad.
The Trump tariffs are shrinking incomes and exploding expenses for farmers, who, thanks to a president they still overwhelmingly support, fear losing their farms.
Many don’t know how much longer they can hang on.
Trump’s punitive tariffs on foreign buyers made their crops less competitive in markets around the world (and drove down prices more) while other senseless tariffs on fertilizer, steel, aluminum, and lumber just sent the cost of doing business through the roof.
The double whammy of Trump tariffs is especially painful for family farms that make up about 87% of all farms in Ohio.
Individual farmers struggle to break even, buy supplies, sell their crops, and build a sustainable future with long-term customers.
But the current tariff dance with Trump keeps them up nights.
Everything a farmer buys “from phosphate and potash to agricultural chemicals, herbicides, machine parts, is up by 50% over the last decade, while our proceeds from the sale of crops is down by 40%,” said fifth-generation Ohio farmer Joe Logan.
The former president of the Ohio Farmers union — a group focused on family farmers — maintained “the industrial agricultural community is chugging right along, raking in billions of dollars” while family farmers are not making any money.
Instead, they’re battling irrational tariffs, rising costs, high interest rates, farm bankruptcies and abiding dread.
How will they move crops without buyers or the major trade deals Trump promised to fix what he broke? (Full article.)
The biggest crop losses to China are American soybeans. Last year China bought $12.6 billion of soybeans, and this year they have bought ZERO, since Trump levied tariffs against them earlier in the year.
Instead, China has turned to Brazil to import soybeans, and after the Trump Administration just gave Argentina a new $20 billion bailout package to “help their economy,” Argentina immediately removed their own tariff to China and sold them several shiploads of soybeans, betraying U.S. farmers.
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