America’s Farmers Are Paying the Price for Trump’s 2025 Agenda

Apr 14, 2025

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Introduction

Donald Trump’s trade war is no longer an abstract policy debate – it’s unfolding in painful real time on America’s farms.

Visit any Midwestern town or rural community this year, and you’ll hear the worry in farmers’ voices. On a small soybean farm in Iowa, for instance, a third-generation farmer walks his fields and finds nothing but loss: mountains of unsold beans that were once destined for China now sit in storage or rot on the ground. In Wisconsin, a dairy family is pouring excess milk down the drain because their export markets have dried up.

These aren’t isolated anecdotes; they’re scenes playing out across the heartland. America’s farmers, who feed the country and much of the world, are being squeezed to the breaking point by Trump’s tariffs and protectionist policies. The harm is happening now – and if nothing changes, it will only get worse.

Retaliatory Tariffs and Lost Markets

Farmers are caught in the crossfire of Trump’s tariff battles. When the U.S. slaps tariffs on countries like China, Mexico, and those in the European Union, those countries hit back with retaliatory tariffs of their own. Unfortunately, they’ve aimed squarely at American agriculture.

China – formerly our biggest buyer of soybeans – effectively shut its doors to U.S. soy by slapping a huge tariff on it, instantly pricing our farmers out of the market. In the blink of an eye, a market that used to buy tens of millions of tons of American soybeans each year was gone.

The impact has been devastating: silos filled to capacity with nowhere for the grain to go, prices plunging to well below the cost of production, and farmers literally plowing under crops they can’t sell. One Louisiana soybean grower had to plow under a thousand acres of his beans, chopping the plants back into the soil rather than harvest them, because no one wants them,” he said in exasperation. “I don’t know what else to do.” That farmer lost not just his crop, but a year’s worth of income and hope.

Similar stories are unfolding for corn growers, pork producers, and dairy farmers. Mexico retaliated against Trump’s tariffs by taxing American pork legs and shoulders, shrinking one of our hog farmers’ top export markets. U.S. pig farmers suddenly found themselves with a glut of unsold meat – too much for domestic consumers to eat – which drives prices for their product so low that it hardly pays to raise the animals.

Dairy and cheese exports have been hit with counter-tariffs too; family dairy farms that were already struggling with low milk prices have seen overseas demand for products like cheese and whey evaporate. With nowhere to send their surplus milk, some dairies are dumping it, and countless others are just shutting their barn doors for good.

These retaliatory tariffs by our trading partners are decimating export markets that took decades for American farmers to build. Instead of selling to eager buyers abroad, farmers are forced to sell into an oversupplied home market at fire-sale prices – or watch their crops literally decay in the field. It’s a cruel irony: the people who grow our food are going hungry for fair markets.

Rising Input Costs – The Squeeze from the Other Side

While farmers struggle to get a decent price for what they produce, they’re also paying more for everything they need to run the farm. Trump’s tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, and other materials were supposed to revive U.S. industry, but on farms the immediate effect is higher costs for machinery, equipment, and supplies.

Think about the tools a farmer relies on: tractors, combines, plows, silos, dairy equipment, irrigation systems. Most of these are made of a lot of metal – now more expensive due to tariffs – or include parts sourced from around the world. So the price tags for new farm equipment have shot up. A tractor that a few years ago cost $150,000 might now cost well over $200,000.

Farmers are indeed seeing equipment costs spiral. If a machine breaks, even replacement parts are pricier now, since things like bearings, gears or tires often come from overseas and are subject to import taxes. Farmers have tried to cope by repairing older equipment or buying used, but guess what? Demand for used machinery is up too, which drives those prices higher as well.

And it’s not just machines. Fertilizer costs have ballooned because many fertilizers or their ingredients are imported. American farmers import most of a key fertilizer ingredient called potash from our neighbor Canada. When Trump decided to play hardball with Canada on trade, even essential farm supplies like potash became collateral damage. Tariffs and trade tensions made those imports cost more, so U.S. fertilizer companies hiked their prices to compensate. The result: farmers now pay significantly more to fertilize their fields. Some have had to cut back on fertilizer, which can hurt their yields, making a bad situation worse. Even basic supplies like seed and animal feed can see price increases if they’re tied to global supply chains.

Add it all up and it’s a perfect storm for farmers’ finances. They earn less for their crops thanks to lost markets, and they pay more to grow those crops in the first place. As one farmer put it, “Everything we buy costs more, and everything we sell earns less. We’re being pulled apart financially.” This one-two punch is gutting farmers’ already thin profit margins. It feels like running up a down escalator: no matter how hard they work, they’re slipping further behind.

Supply Chain Disruptions and Delays

As if higher costs weren’t enough, farmers are also dealing with something that might not make headlines but is felt deeply on the ground – vital supplies and equipment are arriving late, if at all. Trump’s protectionist policies and trade fights have thrown many supply chains into chaos.

When you impose sudden tariffs or constantly renegotiate trade terms, it creates confusion and bottlenecks at ports and in shipping. Many farm chemicals, seeds, and parts are imported or depend on global logistics. Now, with new tariffs and constant brinkmanship, shipments that used to take days can take weeks or months. A grain farmer in Missouri ordered a specialized pesticide for an insect outbreak threatening his corn. In the past, he could get it within a week from an overseas supplier. This year, the delivery kept getting delayed at the port because of additional inspections and paperwork triggered by tariff rules. By the time the pesticide finally arrived, the insect infestation had already chewed through a big portion of his crop. Missed timing can mean the difference between a good harvest and a poor one.

Likewise, a fruit grower in California shared how a critical part for his irrigation system broke at peak season. The part was made in Europe – ordinarily shipped pretty quickly – but with the new trade tensions, it sat in customs limbo for ages. His orchards went half-watered during a heat spell as he waited, and he lost a chunk of his fruit.

Stories like this are becoming common. Seed deliveries for spring planting have been erratic, as international suppliers face uncertainty about U.S. tariffs and sometimes hold back shipments. Equipment dealers report delays in getting new inventory or spare parts, because manufacturers can’t smoothly import what they need. For farmers, these delays are more than an inconvenience – they can be ruinous. If seed for a crop arrives too late, you miss the planting window for the season. If a repair part is held up, a tractor might sit idle during the critical week of harvest.

Farming is a tightly timed dance with nature; losing days or weeks to supply chain hiccups means lost yield that you can’t recover. Trump’s protectionism, far from simplifying things, has tied the agricultural supply chain in knots. Farmers find themselves waiting and worrying: Will the feed order arrive before the animals run out? Will the new harvester get here in time for wheat harvest? The delays and uncertainty chip away at their productivity and peace of mind.

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Debt, Defaults, and Losing the Farm

All of these pressures – lost sales, low prices, higher costs, and disrupted schedules – funnel down to one place: the farm’s bottom line. And for many farmers, the math simply isn’t working anymore.

Farm incomes have collapsed for those hardest hit by the tariffs. When you have bills to pay and loans coming due, but half your crop had to be sold at a loss (or not at all), you quickly find yourself underwater financially. Farmers often borrow money in the spring to pay for seeds, fuel, fertilizer and equipment, expecting to pay those loans back after harvest. But what happens when harvest revenue drops drastically because of trade wars and high costs? Those loans can’t be paid. Debt starts to pile up.

The U.S. farm sector as a whole has seen debt levels shoot up to levels we haven’t seen since the 1980s farm crisis – a time when thousands of farms went bankrupt. It’s a frightening flashback. Decades ago, it was sky-high interest rates and bad markets that caused a wave of foreclosures. Today, it’s lost export markets and tariff-driven costs that are pushing many family farms to the brink.

Farm bankruptcies are, tragically, on the rise again. Last year saw the highest number of farm bankruptcies in about a decade in many regions. In the Upper Midwest – states like Wisconsin and Minnesota – family dairy farms have been closing one after another, unable to survive the combination of low milk prices and trade losses. In grain country, more farmers are quietly talking to their bankers about restructuring loans or even calling the auctioneers to sell off land and equipment. Each bankruptcy or forced auction represents a family losing not just a business, but a way of life.

Imagine a farm that has been in a family for generations, weathering the Great Depression and the 1980s, now being lost because of policy-driven market collapse. These farm failures also ripple out beyond the farm gate. When a farm goes under, the local feed store loses a customer, the local tractor dealership sells one less piece of equipment, the small-town bank takes a hit on a defaulted loan, and the county’s tax base shrinks. Rural communities hollow out a little more. It’s a blow to the entire rural economy.

We are at risk of losing a generation of farmers because of this, and once they’re gone, it’s incredibly hard to bring the farms back. The pride of American agriculture – independent family farms – is fading under an avalanche of debt, and Trump’s trade policies have been a major catalyst of that avalanche.

Global Rivals Gain Ground

While American farmers struggle to stay above water, farmers in other countries are seizing the opportunity we’ve unwittingly handed them. Trade abhors a vacuum.

When the United States – long the world’s agricultural superpower – pulls back from global markets or becomes an unreliable supplier due to tariffs, other nations step forward. As U.S. soybeans and corn get tangled in tariff fights, countries like Brazil and Argentina are more than happy to fill China’s soybean needs or supply corn to Mexico. Brazilian soybean farmers are planting record crops and are exporting at a furious pace to quench China’s appetite for soy. China used to buy roughly a third of all U.S. soybean production; now much of that business has shifted to South America.

In effect, we’ve gifted Brazil a golden opportunity to expand its farm sector and solidify relationships with China that might last for decades. Even if tomorrow the tariffs were lifted, China might stick with Brazil for a large share of its needs because Brazil proved to be a reliable partner when the U.S. was not.

The same goes for other commodities. Argentina, which grows a lot of soy and corn as well, has ramped up its exports. Australia, known for beef, lamb, and wheat, is courting markets that America has left vulnerable. Australian ranchers, for example, have been eyeing Asian markets for beef that the U.S. could lose access to in a prolonged trade dispute. And consider this: once another country’s farmers get a foothold in a market, they often invest to stay there.

Brazil is investing heavily in new infrastructure – railways, ports, storage facilities – to move its crops more efficiently and make those exports even more competitive. They’re essentially building their own version of what the American Midwest has long had: a powerhouse grain belt, tied to global consumers. Every month that U.S. farmers can’t sell freely to the world, competitors are not just taking our sales – they’re strengthening their own industries, forging long-term contracts with our former customers, and undercutting the reputation the U.S. spent years cultivating as the “supplier of choice.” We are losing our competitive edge.

It’s painful to admit, but America’s farm belt is losing a trade war that we started. And if this continues, American agriculture could lose its global leadership permanently. That’s not just a blow to farmers – it’s a strategic loss for the country. We’ve long used our abundant food supply as a tool of diplomacy and global influence. If countries like China, Mexico, or Japan learn to get by without American grain or meat, we lose that leverage. We also risk seeing American food brands replaced on the world stage by Brazilian or Australian ones.

It’s a future where “Made in USA” might not mean much in the global food marketplace. In short, these tariffs are handing our competitors the keys to the kingdom of global agriculture, and that damage will outlast any temporary political win.

Labor Shortages and Immigration Crackdowns

Back home on the farm, there’s yet another crisis deepening – one that at first might seem separate from trade policy, but is tightly linked to Trump’s brand of nationalism. It’s the labor shortage in agriculture, made far worse by aggressive immigration crackdowns.

American farms, especially fruit and vegetable farms, have for decades relied on immigrant labor – much of it undocumented – to plant, tend, and harvest crops. These are jobs that are incredibly demanding: long hours bent under the sun, picking strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, apples – often for low wages. The hard truth is that few U.S.-born workers are willing to do this work, no matter the wage; time and again, growers have raised pay and still can’t find enough local people to harvest their fields.

For a long time, migrant labor from Mexico and Central America has filled the gap. But Trump’s anti-immigrant policies have driven many of those workers away. The administration’s rhetoric and actions – raids on farms, threats of mass deportations, tighter borders, and a general atmosphere of fear – have drastically reduced the farmworker population. Some went back to their home countries; others took jobs in less targeted industries; and many who might have come to the U.S. for seasonal farm work are simply not coming. The result? Crops are going unpicked.

In California’s Central Valley, entire orchards of fruit have been left to rot because not enough workers were available at harvest time. One California farmer watched in dismay as pears in his orchard spoiled on the branches for the first time in his life – he just couldn’t find the crew to pick them in time. In Washington state, some apple growers reported labor shortages so severe that they had to let part of their crop stay on the trees, knowing it would go to waste. In Florida, citrus growers are scrambling; some are scaling back harvest plans because they can’t secure the usual migrant crews. Even dairy farms, which rely on immigrant workers to milk cows and keep operations running, are feeling the pinch as many experienced workers have left the country or moved to less hostile environments.

This labor shortage is strangling farms, especially in labor-intensive sectors like produce. It’s also driving some farmers to consider the unthinkable: moving their operations abroad. I’ve heard of growers exploring buying land in Mexico so they can grow their vegetables there – where the labor is – and then import the produce back to the U.S., effectively sidestepping our own broken labor system. How crazy is that?

American farmers feel they are being pushed out of their own country’s agriculture because of these policies. The tragedy is that this labor crisis was entirely predictable. The farm community has been warning for years: if you crack down on immigrant labor without a plan to replace it, American agriculture will collapse. Those warnings have largely fallen on deaf ears in the Trump administration. The White House’s focus has been on sealing the border and deporting undocumented people, with little regard for the special needs of the farm economy. There is a guest worker program (H-2A visas) for agriculture, but it’s bureaucratic and nowhere near sufficient to fill the gap, and the administration’s overall hostile stance has dissuaded many from even trying to come.

In effect, Trump’s policies are choking off the lifeblood of American farms: people willing to do the work. So now we have fields of crops and not enough hands to harvest them – another form of self-inflicted wound. Not only are farmers losing money from those wasted crops, but consumers may eventually see higher prices and more imported food, because if we can’t grow it here, it will be grown elsewhere. It’s a blow to our nation’s food security and self-reliance, all caused by a shortsighted political stance on immigration.

Whiplash in Farm Policy and Dependency on Subsidies

Overlaying all of these specific issues is a broader problem: the unstable, unpredictable nature of Trump’s farm policy. Farmers are used to dealing with uncertainty from Mother Nature – weather, pests, floods, droughts. But they are now facing damaging uncertainty from their own government.

Tariffs are announced, then delayed, then doubled, then negotiated, then re-imposed – it’s a constant whiplash. One week Canada and Mexico are exempt from a tariff, the next week they’re not. One day there’s talk of a breakthrough deal with China, the next day that deal falls apart and new tariffs are tweeted out at 3 AM. Imagine trying to run a business under those conditions.

A farmer deciding what to plant or whether to invest in new equipment is essentially gambling on what the President might do on a whim. That’s no way to operate. The uncertainty itself has become a huge burden. Markets react wildly to every rumor or presidential tweet, with soybean and corn prices swinging unpredictably. Farmers can’t even count on stable prices from month to month, making it incredibly hard to plan ahead.

Many farmers simply want predictable policy and steady markets – even if prices are a bit low, at least they can plan. But right now everything feels like a guessing game due to the chaos of Trump’s tariff brinkmanship.

During Trump’s first term this happened too. In response to the farm pain caused by his trade wars, Trump’s approach was essentially: break it, and then offer a Band-Aid. The federal government cut a lot of bailout checks to farmers to compensate for tariff losses. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent in emergency farm aid – the so-called “Trump tariff payments.” While any farmer will tell you they appreciated the help in a dire time, those bailouts are not a real solution. They are a temporary lifeline paid by your tax dollars, and an uneven one at that.

Some large farming operations got huge checks while smaller family farms got modest sums that didn’t come close to covering their losses. Crucially, no farmer actually wants a government handout; they’d much rather have trade than aid, as the saying goes. They want to earn their income from the market, not from Washington. But Trump’s erratic policies have forced them into dependency.

This year, as the trade war drags on anew, farmers are wondering if another round of aid will come. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals, sometimes promising to support farmers “whatever it takes,” other times saying “farmers have to tough it out.” The uncertainty is nerve-wracking. It’s hard for farmers to make long-term investments or decisions when one year their losses are reimbursed, and the next year maybe not.

And beyond the economics, it’s demoralizing. Farmers by nature are proud, self-reliant folks. They don’t want pity or perpetual help – they just want fair access to do their business. Being forced to take subsidies to survive a crisis created by one’s own government feels like salt in the wound. It creates a profound sense of instability and insecurity in farm country. Instead of strong markets, farmers now look to political decisions and relief programs to determine their fate, and that’s a very shaky foundation. It also warps the market itself – when farmers start planting crops based on what subsidy they might get rather than what consumers actually need, inefficiencies abound.

In short, Trump’s trade war not only caused immediate damage, it has thrown the entire farm economy off balance, replacing the normal rhythms of supply and demand with the whims of politics.

A Reckoning for Rural America – and a Wake-Up Call to Voters

Taken together, all these factors paint a stark picture: the very people Trump vowed to protect – America’s farmers – are being hurt the most by his tariffs and protectionist zeal. Every policy has trade-offs, but here the trade-offs are simply too painful and too unjust.

We are watching the slow-motion wrecking of a vital American industry and way of life. It’s not just numbers on a balance sheet – it’s families who have lived on and cared for the land for generations being forced out. It’s the anxiety of not knowing if you can afford to keep the lights on next month or buy seeds for the spring. It’s the despair in seeing bins of your crop with nowhere to go, or crops wilting in the field with no one to harvest them. These policies are hurting real people – proud Americans who ask not for special treatment, only for a fair chance to compete and thrive.

I write this with deep concern not only for farmers, but for the country as a whole. What does it say about our leadership and our priorities if we let our farmers go under? Farming is woven into the fabric of our democracy and economy. Rural America has long been the backbone of the nation – providing food security, hard-working values, and a sense of community that is central to our identity. If that backbone breaks, the damage will radiate everywhere.

Urban or suburban readers might wonder, “How does this affect me?” Well, if we lose farms, we could face higher food prices and become more dependent on foreign food sources over time. And there’s a moral issue: Do we as a nation stand by while our neighbors are driven out of business by avoidable policy mistakes? Farmers have always been there for America – producing abundance, year after year, often unappreciated. Now they need America to be there for them.

This is also a moment of truth for our democracy. Are we electing leaders who really have the country’s best interests at heart, or those who pursue short-sighted political stunts? Tariffs might sound tough, they might play well at rallies, but as we’re seeing, they come with very real consequences for Americans who work hard and play by the rules. The farmers hurting now are, in many cases, the same people who were hailed as “true patriots” expected to weather the trade war for the greater good. They did their part, patiently, for a time. But that patience has run dry, and rightfully so – because the promised payoff never came, only more pain.

American voters everywhere should take note. This isn’t about left or right, Republican or Democrat – it’s about common sense and competence. We need leaders who understand that you can’t just bluster your way through complex global trade relationships without people getting hurt. We need policies that actually help the American people, not ones that sound good on a podium but fail on the ground. The story of what’s happening to our farmers should serve as a cautionary tale.

As we look to the future, every voter should ask: Is this the outcome we wanted? Do we want an America where farms are boarded up, where our role as the breadbasket of the world is surrendered to others, where the livelihoods of those who feed us are sacrificed for hollow political victories? I hope the answer is a resounding no.

In the coming elections and in every public forum, Americans must hold their leaders accountable for the harm being done to rural America. Politicians will make a lot of claims, but results matter more. And the results of these 2025 tariffs are clear – they are hurting us. It’s time for a change in approach, time to stop the bleeding.

The next time we step into the voting booth, let’s remember the farmer in Iowa with unsold soybeans, the dairy family in Wisconsin that had to sell off their cows, the fruit grower in California watching fruit rot, the Kansas wheat farmer who said he felt “drawn and quartered” by these policies. Let’s remember them and vote for the policies that will help them get back on their feet.

Our farmers don’t want pity – they want prosperity, earned with their own hands. They want trade restored, costs brought down, and a stable policy environment where they can plan for the future. They want what any of us want in our work: the chance to compete and succeed. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to demand better.

America’s future and its very soul are tied to the fate of those peaceful green fields and the people who tend them. We cannot allow misguided tariffs and protectionism to trample the American farmer. Let’s stand up, speak out, and make sure this great country gets back to supporting its own – before it’s too late. In the end, saving the American farmer is about saving America. It’s time we remember that at the ballot box and beyond.

Mitch Jackson, Esq. | links