MOULTON, Ala. (WHNT) — On Wednesday, President Donald Trump unveiled new tariffs that will have an impact on many different industries, the cotton and textile industry included.
News 19 spoke with a cotton farmer who’s been keeping an eye on the potential impact to his business and the industry as a whole.
“Growing cotton is a tough row to hoe; it’s a finicky plant,” said Mark Yeager.
Yeager is a life-long cotton farmer and the founder of Red Land Cotton in Lawrence County.
Red Land Cotton specializes in bed sheets, apparel and other home items. Its products use cotton grown in Lawrence County and are 100% American-made.
Yeager said he takes great pride in his work and the products Red Land Cotton produces.
“A sense of pride and it’s made in America,” he said. “I think it’s a great deal.”
Yeager said the U.S. cotton industry as a whole has faced a lot of challenges in recent years.
“If something doesn’t change, I don’t think there will be cotton farming much longer, if we’re going to be totally dependent on foreign growth,” he said.
Yeager said much of the cotton and textile production now happens in other countries, and then the final product is imported into the U.S.
He said he hopes that down the line, tariffs help ramp up production on U.S. soil.
“The industry is almost killed like it is; it’s very meager,” he said.
However, he said if the industry is built back up, “We will have more mills that will want to weave our cotton and finishers, the whole supply chain, it should be better.”
Since Yeager’s products are 100% made in America, he doubts he’ll be impacted too much by new tariffs. However, he’s keeping close tabs on the industry as a whole.
“I was on a Zoom call with a big organization this morning and they were talking about the CAFTA (Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement), the MCA (United-States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement), and there is going to be a tariff on the products that are in that agreement.”
He said U.S. farmers that export their cotton could have a headache when calculating tariffs.
“I don’t understand how they’re going to do all the computation on how it is because if it’s got American cotton in it, it gets a cut and this that and the other.”
Yeager said he hopes more Americans will continue to support American-made goods.
The post Moulton Cotton farmer talks Trump tariffs appeared first on WHNT.
