President Donald Trump
At a 2018 press conference in New York City, Trump said of American farmers, "I love them, and they voted for me, and they love me. ... And they said, 'We don't care if we get hurt, he's doing the right thing.'"
During his 2025 joint address to Congress, Trump said, "Our new trade policy will also be great for the American farmer — I love the farmer."
Hardly any sector has suffered from Trump's trade wars more than agriculture. Soybeans were hardest hit.
Before the first trade war in the first Trump administration, China was the biggest foreign market for U.S. soybeans, taking about 30 percent of total production. Soybean exports to China fell from $12.3 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2018.
Joe Biden came into office, and exports rose in 2022 to a record $16.4 billion. But farmers didn't vote for Biden's successor in 2024. They voted again for Trump, even though he campaigned with a promise for Trade War II, singling out China.
And come "Liberation Day" on April 2, he launched it with heightened ferocity. China retaliated, targeting U.S. agricultural products. This year, just as American soybean farmers anticipate a bumper crop, exports to China are down to about zero.
Other American farm products have also suffered greatly. They include corn, beef, tree nuts, and pork.
The political mystery endures. "It's somewhat understandable that Trump appealed to rural voters in 2016. After all, he kept saying he loved farmers. The first trade war undoubtedly took them by surprise, though he did bail them out with $23 billion in aid, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
But why did they vote for him a second time? Trump received an even larger percentage of their support while promising another trade war. Almost 78 percent of voters in farming-dependent counties supported him in 2024. The reasons were probably part cultural — rural Americans tend to be more socially conservative — and Trump's inflation argument also hit home. Under Biden, prices were rising for fertilizer, fuel, and equipment.
But even if this latest trade war ended tomorrow, growers of commodity crops like soybeans would still face lasting damage. They've spent decades cultivating buyers for their products in China and elsewhere. China is looking for new suppliers, and once those relationships are cemented, it will be hard to win them back.
China has turned to Brazil and Argentina for soybeans — Australia for beef. It's investing in port projects in Peru and Brazil to ensure a reliable supply of farm products from South America. Trump is talking about another big bailout of farmers, but once replaced, Americans have lost long term. No magic wand can bring their export markets back to their former glory.
The trade war has also further raised the farmers' prices, especially for fertilizer. Much of it comes from trade-war target Canada.
One doubts that other business interests would have been as accommodating to Trump's ruinous policies as farmers were after getting whacked the first time around.
Heartland grumbling has turned into louder protest. But no matter. Trump is presumably not running again for president. He no longer needs their vote — or rural scenery for campaign backdrops. And he certainly doesn't yearn for their love. He's a city boy, and the company he favors hails from crypto, tech, and Wall Street.
How did Trump pull it off, abusing farmers while convincing them, like battered wives, that he still loved them? That took considerable talent, reminiscent of his much-quoted remark, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."
Thing is, people on Fifth Avenue are doing just fine. It's the farmers who are bleeding.
Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
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