On Wednesday afternoon, President Trump announced a series of tariffs, scheduled to start over the next few days, on some of agriculture’s most significant trade partners. Some corn and soybean growers say they are bracing themselves for potentially more financial pain ahead.
President Donald Trump unveiled a series of tariffs on Wednesday afternoon during his “Make America Wealthy Again” event in the White House Rose Garden.
Using his International Emergency Economic Powers Act authority, he announced the U.S. will impose a 10% tariff on more than 50 countries that will take effect April 5, 2025, at 12:01 a.m. EDT.
President Trump will also impose an individualized reciprocal higher tariff on the countries with which the U.S. has the largest trade deficits to take effect April 9, 2025, at 12:01 a.m. EDT. All other countries will continue to be subject to the original 10% tariff baseline.
During the announcement, President Trump held up a chart showing specific countries in line for what he described as reciprocal tariffs.
“ We will charge them approximately half of what they are — and have been — charging us,” he said. “So, the tariffs will not be a full reciprocal. I could have done that, I guess, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries.”
A partial list of the countries and tariff percentages to be imposed include:
- China – 34%
- European Union – 20%
- Vietnam – 46%
- Taiwan – 32%
- Japan – 24%
- India – 26%
- South Korea – 25%
- Thailand – 36%
- Switzerland – 31%
- Indonesia – 32%
Farmers Caught In The Crossfire
Glen Newcomer wants to be positive in the face of President Trump’s move to introduce a new round of tariffs on U.S. trading partners. But the northwest Ohio corn and soybean farmer says he’s concerned any looming trade wars could create more losers than winners in the agricultural industry, a sentiment shared in a recent AgWeb poll that found more than half of farmers don’t support Trump’s use of tariffs.
On the winning side of things, Newcomer thinks this moment might be a short-term opportunity for farmers in the market for equipment to go ahead and make their purchases.
“There are a lot of dealerships with inventory on their lots right now that was shipped and is sitting there, so that equipment is going to have a lower sticker price than equipment that’s going to be tariffed or have components that are tariffed,” says Newcomer, who farms near Bryan, Ohio. His advice to other farmers: “Get a look at the inventory and see if there’s anything there you need because the new equipment will continue to cost more.”
While that’s a possible silver lining, it’s about the only positive Newcomer can muster up.
“The expectation that farmers will get compensated, as they did in the past, for this trade difference – with all of the emphasis on reducing spending – I don’t know if that’s going to materialize,” Newcomer says.
History shows when trade wars break out, they don’t always play out for agriculture the way the federal government intends, leaving farmers caught in the crossfire. During the 2018 trade war with China, for instance, U.S. agriculture experienced more than $27 billion in losses, according to the American Soybean Association.
The association says the U.S. has yet to fully recover its former market share of soybean exports to China, the world’s No. 1 buyer of the commodity.
“I think there’s going to be some pain here for a while, and the biggest thing is these export markets. We have handed China to Brazil, and we’re just pushing them away more and more, and we’ve allowed this to happen,” says Chase Dewitz, who farms in central North Dakota, near Steele.
“It’s the same thing with all our industries, with the production of any types of goods,” Dewitz adds. “The policies of the last 30, 40, 50 years have just pushed this thing so far. And without some major pain, I don’t know how you reset that.”
Ag Barometer Shares Farmer Sentiments
Other growers expressed similar nervousness about tariffs and declining optimism in the Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer for March. Forty-three percent of the farmers surveyed cited shifting trade policy as the No. 1 driver of their negative outlook.
In addition, farmers were negative about the outlook for the future of ag export markets. Five-year expectations for U.S. exports reached an all-time low for the survey, according to James Mintert, the barometer’s principal investigator and director of Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture.
How much economic pain farmers can absorb from the Trump administration’s decisions that impact agriculture depends on the individual’s financial position, Newcomer points out.
“If you are in a strong financial position, and you have strong working capital, you’ve got a lot of dry powder,” he says. “I think you’re just going to say, ‘I’m willing to absorb some of this for long-term gain.’ But if a person has to meet a budget, or they have strong commitments or obligations that they have to meet… and if taxes go up locally, for property and land, and with the inflation of everything else, and your budget is stretched, there’s going to be a huge concern out here for profitability,” Newcomer adds.
Dewitz says U.S. farmers want changes that will bring about fairer trade agreements but no one likes financial pain.
“Everyone says, ‘this needs to be fixed,’ and then on the backside they say, ‘as long as it doesn’t affect me,’” he adds. “Well, it’s going to affect everybody.”
To read the full commentary as it was published on the AgWeb website, click here.
To listen to the full conversation as it was published by AgriTalk, click here.