By Samantha Cave and Austin Bryniarski
Since January, the second Trump Administration’s trade policy has been marked by constant change. The most recent headlines indicate that the Supreme Court will determine the fate of many of the Administration’s tariffs, but it’s likely that tariffs will continue to dominate public discourse about trade, especially as they pertain to agriculture.
Tariffs are a tax on imports paid for by the importing company, with added costs often passed on to consumers. They have long been used around the world as a form of market control, generally implemented as a way to encourage the manufacturing and consumption of domestic products. By raising the prices of imported goods, tariffs would theoretically boost domestic economies by encouraging domestic production. They have the potential to be used as an economic policy tool to support the common good. For decades, NFFC’s position has been that tariffs for agricultural products are a policy tool that have the potential to advance trade justice – primarily by limiting the importation of corporate-driven commodities that are produced with lower labor and environmental standards and undercut US producers.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not engaged tariffs as a tool for thoughtful economic policy that benefits family farmers or the working class, instead using them to force the administration’s foreign policy agenda on other countries. For example, the administration has attempted to use tariff discussions to weaken Canada’s supply management system, which structures its dairy, poultry, and egg industries to ensure family farmers there have stable markets and can make a decent income. The Administration has also targeted countries like India, where tariffs have been used as leverage to undermine food security programs there.
This approach has caused some markets that farmers rely on to vanish, adding to the financial strain of farm debt and damage from natural disasters. It has increased the costs of inputs that farmers rely on to grow crops, like fertilizer and equipment. And it has increased food prices even further, leaving working families struggling to put food on their tables. US farmers and working families have not benefited from this administration’s trade policy because its use of tariffs fails to address the root causes of the current farm crisis: market consolidation and volatility, corporate power grabbing, and globalized free trade. At home and abroad, farmers and working families are paying the price while industrial agriculture reaps the benefits.
Current global trade policy, centered around free-trade agreements, incentivizes companies to maximize profits by shifting production to countries with minimal labor rights, consumer, and environmental protections. Policies that advance a free trade agenda have also been criticized for causing domestic job losses and hollowing out local – and especially rural – economies. The World Trade Organization (WTO), officially formed in 1995 with significant political support by the US government, is the most emblematic global institution supporting free trade. Since its adoption, it has been condemned by many for undermining sovereignty while prioritizing the profits of multinational corporations over people worldwide.
The combination of status quo free trade policies with the weakening of domestic economic policies like supply management and price supports has had dramatic adverse impacts on the American agricultural sector. Small-scale farmers both domestic and international have been undercut for decades in service to a false solution centering expansion of export markets in lieu of regulating domestic markets to deliver fair prices. In 2019, for the first time in more than fifty years, the US imported more dollars worth of agricultural products than we exported. Now, our agricultural trade deficit is at its highest ever, reaching more than $72 billion in 2024. That means that while the US relies on trade with other countries to ensure the supply of food, the Administration is using tariffs to actively attack those countries. Broad, poorly planned tariffs have the potential to further destabilize our domestic markets in an already tumultuous year for farmers.
The US agricultural trade deficit is at an all time high. Chart showing data from 2004 to 2024 by USDA ERS. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/agricultural-trade
NFFC urges the administration to advance fair agricultural trade policies and ensure that independent small and mid-scale farmers and Congress have a seat at the policy-making table. After so many decades of US export-oriented free trade policy, we need a new trade framework based around market transparency, economic justice, environmental sustainability, and human rights. Coupled with investment in local food infrastructure and policy supporting small and mid-scale farmers, tariffs can be used to revitalize the economy and support fair prices and wages for farmers and workers, while ensuring food is accessible and affordable for all who need to eat. Without sound domestic policy in place, they set all of us up for failure. With farm debt and bankruptcies surging, the stakes are too high to play games with farmers’ livelihoods and therefore everyone’s dinner plates. The administration must commit to a farm trade agenda rooted in economic justice and with the input of independent farmers.