U.S. President Donald Trump’s chaotic agenda is taking a growing toll on American farmers, many of whom backed his return to office but are increasingly feeling the pressures of his unpredictable trade and deportation policies.
It’s not just the shock waves of Trump’s trade war against much of the world that are hitting U.S. farmers hard, particularly in sectors that are highly dependent on trade with Chinese markets. Trump’s immigration crackdown, too, has injected new uncertainty into the broader farm labor force, around 40 percent of which has been made up of undocumented immigrants over the past three decades.
U.S. farmers are facing a “very difficult” landscape, said Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University. “They’re getting pinched on multiple sides.”
For farmers in the United States, working in agriculture has long been a difficult business, no matter who is in office. In normal years, most farmers lose money on farming and must cross-subsidize those losses with other, nonfarm earnings, Barrett said.
But the addition of Trump’s trade war and deportation crackdown is making business even harder for a group that was one of his key voter bases in the recent U.S. presidential election and helped ensure his return to office. The number of small-business bankruptcies filed by farmers and fishers recently surged to a five-year high, Bloomberg reported, and the Department of Agriculture expects farm debt to reach a record high this year.
“This year is going to be tougher than most,” Barrett said.
That’s in large part because the Trump administration’s policies are now squeezing both farmers’ production costs and overseas markets. On the production side, Trump’s aggressive deportation drive has intensified uncertainty in the sector and driven away some workers, compounding labor challenges on farms.
“The agricultural workforce in the United States is disproportionately dependent on immigrant labor—both documented legal labor as well as undocumented workers,” Barrett said. “The stemming of migrant inflows is really hurting.”
The costs of fertilizer, a key agricultural input, have also soared, fueled in part by the uncertainty of Trump’s tariff regime and strained supplies worldwide. Last month, one North American benchmark of fertilizer prices skyrocketed to its highest level in nearly a decade, Bloomberg reported.
It’s an issue that Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley brought attention to last month as he called for lower tariffs on fertilizer. “Fertilizer input prices are at ALL TIME HIGH relative to the low low prices of grain,” he wrote in a post on X.
At the same time that these production costs have risen, the prices of some major crops have remained low, adding even more financial pressures on farmers across the United States. For sectors that are heavily reliant on trade with the Chinese market, Trump’s trade war is also making it harder for U.S. farmers to sell their products abroad.
Take the U.S. soybean industry. China is one of the world’s biggest soybean consumers, gobbling up more than 60 percent of the world’s traded soybean supplies over the past five years, according to the American Soybean Association (ASA), making it a crucial market for U.S. farmers. After Trump unleashed his tariffs against much of the world, Beijing struck back by spurning U.S. soybeans—leaving U.S. farmers of the crop scrambling for a lifeline.
“China is hitting back on something that they hope will get the attention of U.S. policymakers,” said Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is now at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
U.S. soybean farmers are starting to feel the pain of that decision. The fall harvest kicks off this month, but China still has yet to book any U.S. soybean purchases—an unusual development that has sent shock waves through the sector. Typically by this time of the year, nearly 40 percent of soybean sales for the marketing year are already booked, according to Caleb Ragland, the president of the ASA.
“Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress,” Ragland said in a statement. “U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer.”
No matter the industry, businesses and companies typically dislike political and trade uncertainty, which can complicate long-term planning. But that kind of uncertainty is especially disruptive in the U.S. agricultural sector, which is highly capital-intensive and requires immense investments in land, machinery, equipment, and other facilities, said Christopher Wolf, an agricultural economist at Cornell University.
“It’s just harder to pull the trigger on those big long-term investments if you have these uncertainties that can impact the profitability of them,” he said.
During Trump’s first term in office, the leader’s trade war with China was so devastating for U.S. farmers, and in particular the soybean sector, that his administration ultimately unveiled a massive $28 billion bailout to help ease the pain. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has assured farmers that Trump is prepared to bail them out again if necessary, but outside of a farmer subsidy package that will be rolled out over the next decade, that scale of financial support has yet to be seen.
But even if Trump does end up offering U.S. farmers another hefty bailout, some of the damage of his trade war may be hard to reverse in the long term. Global agricultural commodity markets are extremely competitive, and trade tensions have pushed many of U.S. farmers’ longtime overseas markets to seek alternative suppliers.
After Trump’s first trade war, U.S. soybean farmers lost considerable market share to Brazil—another major producer—which they still have not been able to claw back.
“Once a buyer has an established, reliable contractor, a reliable supplier offering high-quality product on time at a competitive price, they’re loath to start looking again,” Barrett said.
It’s an “especially worrisome” time for those in the farm sector and in rural America, Barrett said. “They’re suffering the consequences of their voting pattern now.”
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