Farmers, among Donald Trump’s most loyal constituencies, are expected to be hit harder than just about anyone by the president’s tariff policy.
Though he put larger tariffs on hold, an across-the-board 10 percent tariff on goods from 60 countries remains. Trump exempted tariffs on herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers but farmers remain fearful that other countries could respond with retaliatory tariffs directly on their exports.
Jim Hartman, a North Carolina beekeeper who makes raw honey, said it’s not just the tariffs that have him fretting about the future. Hartman said he lost a $150,000 contract with the federal government, which would in turn provide the raw honey to schools and food banks.
Trump cut that program as part of the federal government’s belt-tightening.
“For a lot of other local farmers around here, it was a major source of reliable revenue,” Hartman told CNN. “For me, it’s going to cost me $150,000 a year.”
That’s roughly 50 percent of his annual revenue. The tariffs threaten to take even more.
Packaging supplies to send his honey will cost him another five to six thousand dollars, Hartman said.
There’s no more room in his budget to replace old or outdated equipment. And forget about hiring new workers.
“We’re not going to hire anymore people, that’s for sure, he said.
During his first term, Trump bailed out farmers impacted by what were modest tariffs compared to what’s being proposed now. And the fund used in that bailout is nearly depleted and isn’t due to be replenished for several months. It’s unclear how much, if any, money the federal government might add.
“There’s just not the room for maneuver in the federal budget to do [bailouts],” said Christopher Barrett, an economist at Cornell University. “COVID and the first Trump administration’s tax cuts combined wrecked the [federal] budget.”
Some experts say the losses accrued this time around would be nearly impossible to compensate, as inflation has already caused prices for fertilizer and seed to soar, while prices for major crops like soybeans and corn have plummeted roughly 40 percent since 2022.
“We have an example of what happened in the past, and it’s a very similar situation, except the farm economy at that time was much stronger than it is now,” Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association and a Kentucky farmer, told Politico. “We don’t have any margin for error. …We’re going to lose a generation of young farmers.”
Still, the Trump administration seems determined to keep a key constituency happy. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has announced plans for trade missions in a bid to open up expanded export markets in six different countries, including India and the United Kingdom, that were among those slapped with new tariffs.
On Thursday, Rollins acknowledged that USDA is “setting up the infrastructure” to account for any short-term economic hardships farmers and ranchers might face.
Asked if he would change his vote if he had it to do over, Hartman, a three-time Trump voter, said, “Perhaps I should’ve considered other options.”
“I never thought I was going to lose this much money this fast,” he continued.
Trump’s tariff pause offered him little relief.
“It’s flip-flopped so many times you can’t take it to the bank,” Hartman said. “Who knows what it will be next week?”
