02/21/2025

With Multiple Tariffs Looming, Farmers who Support Trump Grow Nervous

They fear losing foreign customers for American crops

FARMERSBURG, Iowa — Like all successful farmers, Suzanne Shirbroun has learned to manage uncertainty.

But President Donald Trump’s near-daily edicts on tariffs and trade threaten to upend all her careful calculations. As the president mulls a revolution in global economics, farmers like Shirbroun, who raises soybeans and corn with her husband, Joe, find themselves in the crosshairs.

Trump's recent tariffs on Chinese goods will make the herbicide she uses to keep her fields weed-free more expensive. The levies he’s announced on foreign steel and aluminum will raise the already inflation-swollen price of tractors and other farm machinery. And his enthusiasm for increasing taxes on all imported products could ignite a global trade war that boomerangs on American farmers, the principal targets of foreign retaliation in Trump’s first term.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.