A beekeeper who voted for President Donald Trump three times says he would have “considered other options” after admitting the president’s tariffs could put him out of business.
“I never thought I was going to lose this much money this fast,” farmer Jim Hartman told CNN, explaining that cuts to the federal budget, combined with the Trump admin’s tariff policy, could cause him to lose over half of his annual income.
Hartman, who runs Secret Garden Bees, a honey farm in North Carolina, told the presenter that “the cost of equipment has just gone through the roof” since Trump was re-elected, with things looking to get steadily worse in the coming months.
“We just bought our year’s supply of bottles from Taiwan and our year’s supply of corks from Portugal about 3 weeks ago, so that would have been another $50 or $6000 out of my pocket,” he said.
Hartman said the increased costs mean he has been forced to carry out repairs rather than replace equipment and is unable to hire any more workers to help him run the farm.
But it’s not just the tariffs that are squeezing his budget. Hartman admits that nearly half of his business comes from selling honey to the federal government for use in food banks and at schools as part of a program that was suddenly halted by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) without any warning as part of its efforts to streamline government spending.
“For a lot of other local farmers around here, that was a major source of reliable revenue,” he said. “For me, you know, it’s going to cost me around $150,000 a year, roughly 50% of my revenue. That’s a massive hit.”
Hartman made his comments before the Trump administration temporarily suspended the tariffs for 90 days but later told CNN the government’s policy had “flip-flopped so many times you can’t take it to the bank.”
“Stuff like this is pushing me left,” he told the Wall Street Journal in a separate interview, claiming the small farmers like him have been left to carry the brunt of the president’s trade war. And although he does not blame Trump personally for the economic downturn, “the people he’s appointed and the way they’re going about things, it’s not OK,” he said.
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