American farmers, ranchers and agricultural industry experts are still sorting through what increased tariffs on dozens of countries will mean for both U.S. farm products and consumers.
But there are a few broad areas where American farmers, and consumers, are likely to see prices rise or products disappear.
Inputs
The cost of everything farmers use to produce their goods — machinery, fertilizer, herbicides, feed — has been rising, squeezing profitability. That will only pick up speed.
Most of the fertilizer American farmers use is imported. Some of that will continue to face previously announced 10 percent tariffs, while fertilizer that comes from Trinidad & Tobago, a major producer, and a number of countries in the Middle East will see tariffs as high as 30 percent.
Tariffs on steel and aluminum exporting countries will raise costs for things like tractors, fencing and grain bins. Machinery and equipment used in food manufacturing and packaging will be more expensive, too.
Imported Food
The United States imported $212 billion worth of agricultural products last year, according to the Agriculture Department. Some of that can be replaced by an increase in American-grown products, and the new increased tariffs do not meaningfully change the duty rates for the two countries that produced almost $89 billion of those imports, Mexico and Canada, because most food products are covered by a preexisting trade agreement among those countries and the United States.
Still, that leaves tens of billions of dollars worth of agricultural products that will soon be subjected to higher tariffs. The goods that will be most difficult to replace will be products that the United States may not have the climate, topography or infrastructure to grow immediately. That includes tropical fruits like pineapples and mangoes, coffee and chocolate, or the produce that can’t be grown year-round in the United States.
Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, has suggested there could be exemptions for products not grown in the United States, but that hasn’t been formalized.
Retaliation
Retaliatory tariffs could impact the $176 billion worth of agricultural products the U.S. exported last year, making them less competitive.
“Given the ag sector’s dependence on exports, ag products are a very tempting target for retaliatory measures,” Darci Vetter, the chief agricultural negotiator during the Obama administration, said in an email.
A version of this can already be seen with soybeans, the biggest American agricultural export. More than half of American soybean exports go to China, and that country’s 10 percent retaliatory tariff — down from 125 percent after a temporary trade truce in May — has already taken a bite out of the trade.
Through May, the last month of data, $6.6 billion worth of soybeans have been exported to China in 2025. During the same time frame last year, $9 billion worth was sent to China.
Uncertainty
Even the trade deals said to be completed, like those with the European Union and Japan, leave as many questions as answers.
The White House has announced that Japan will buy more American rice and that the European Union will address barriers to trade beyond tariffs, like sanitary requirements for pork and dairy products. But the full details of the agreements have not been released, and it has become clear, in some cases, that there were disagreements between how the White House and other countries were interpreting their trade deals.
Kevin Draper is a business correspondent covering the agriculture industry. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
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