‘i’m Concerned’: Ag-state Republicans Start To Sound Alarm On Trump Tariffs

Republicans in Washington have spent weeks dismissing concerns about President Donald Trump’s tariffs or arguing they’re just a negotiating tactic. But now with major tariffs kicking in on the country’s two largest trade partners, some are starting to publicly worry.

“I’m concerned,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said of the 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico that went into effect Tuesday after midnight. “I’m concerned.”

“Uneasy, I think, is a word,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).

They and dozens of other GOP lawmakers represent states with major agriculture industries that are among the first targets of trade retaliation from Ottawa and Mexico City. The Canadian government has already disclosed more than $20 billion worth of U.S. goods it plans to slap with higher tariffs, including food products such as poultry, beef, fish and yogurt. The fallout for ag producers, a traditionally conservative-leaning industry, will be severe. And it’s prompting Republicans in those states to take on an uncomfortable position in the party right now — questioning, albeit quietly, a major plank of Trump’s agenda.

The agriculture industry lost $26 billion from retaliatory tariffs in 2018 and 2019 — the first time Trump launched a trade war — according to the Agriculture Department, with soybean, sorghum and pork producers facing the biggest losses. While USDA stepped in with billions in direct payments to farmers to help them weather the fallout, that funding may be harder to access in Trump’s second term, as the administration seeks to cut federal spending.

USDA’s Commodity Credit Corp., the agency’s internal bank that the first Trump administration tapped to compensate farmers, is running low on funding. And it may be hard to sell Trump officials on a new infusion of cash for the fund at the same time they are slashing spending elsewhere, warned former Trump trade official Ronald Baumgarten, former senior director in the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office of Agricultural Affairs.

“If you're trying to shrink government, you certainly don't want to enlarge the subsidies,” said Baumgarten, who served under both President Barack Obama and Trump.

But a number of Republicans said Monday night they were confident the Trump administration would find a way to compensate farmers who lose money and market share from the newly launched trade wars.

“We’re going to keep our guys in the game,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), while acknowledging he was concerned about the short-term impact of the tariffs. “I’m going to work hard to do that. And that’s why we’ve got to separate short term and long term. The long-term goal is to get better terms for our guys.”

Trump on Monday appeared to acknowledge the rising fears in farm country, addressing "the Great Farmers of the United States,” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States,” he wrote. “Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!"

According to the White House, Trump was referring to the so-called reciprocal tariffs he plans to levy on countries around the world on April 2, which the White House says it will calculate based on the tariffs and trade barriers those countries apply to U.S. goods. But the economic reality isn’t that simple.

Agricultural exports have become an increasingly important revenue source for American farmers over the past 25 years, surging from $57.3 billion in 1998 to $174 billion in 2023, according to the Agriculture Department.

Consumers rely on imports from trading partners like Mexico and Canada to have access to specialty crops like seasonal fruits and vegetables, spirits and beer. And farmers require imports of materials like potash, a mineral used to make fertilizer, and steel or plastic for farm machinery and equipment, which are not produced in large enough quantities within the U.S. to meet the domestic demand.

“You cannot export a potash mine,” said Jamie Tronnes, the executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security, a group that pushes for stronger ties between the U.S. and Canada. “It’s in the ground [in Canada]. You can’t just get it.”

Powerful agriculture lobbying groups and GOP lawmakers have said they’re counting on Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to stand up for agriculture interests in Cabinet discussions and bail out producers caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariff battles.

Rollins promised the Senate Agriculture Committee during her confirmation hearing that she would “bring in new trade partners” and “expand access” for U.S. farmers to foreign markets.

The concerns farm-state Republicans raised about Trump’s new round of tariffs Monday night are hardly deafening, and frequently were followed by statements of support for the president’s broader trade goals.

“I'm a farmer in real life, too,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (D-Calif.). “It is something we'll all have to weather, but ultimately the proceeds from the tariffs, he’s funneling a lot of that right back to agriculture. I think it's kind of ‘wait and see’ a little bit as to how it plays out. It's not terrible, you know, I mean, you hear a lot of concern out there, and a lot of times concerns are ‘what-ifs’ that never really come about.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said he wasn’t worried about the tariffs at all, arguing that it was part of a total package that would ultimately make things better for farmers.

“It’s not in a vacuum,” Schmitt said. “I think if you combine the reduction of government spending with energy outputs, that we’re actually going to be in a much better spot.”

But for a party that spent much of the past month expressing widespread confidence in Trump’s ability to make a deal, and insisting the threat of tariffs was largely a negotiating ploy, even the mild doubts voiced by some lawmakers represented a shift in rhetoric.

Democrats, desperately searching for a political message since the November elections, are already sensing an opportunity to hammer Republicans on the economic fallout.

The stock markets slipped Tuesday morning on the trade news, and are lower than when Trump took office in January. Overall consumer sentiment declined in February. And inflation is holding steady.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) pointed out that Trump campaigned on lowering prices after years of stubborn inflation and high housing costs. Instead, many are bracing to pay more.

“The president should be focused on lowering costs,” Peters said. “He said he was going to lower inflation, and through these tariffs he’s actually going to increase inflation and hurt American families.”

Trump narrowly won Michigan in November, part of his sweep across the manufacturing-heavy swing states in the Upper Midwest. But the impact of tariffs on the state’s automobile and agriculture industries, which are heavily dependent upon trade with Canada and Mexico, could give Democrats there an opening with voters.

Trump’s newly installed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “said he wants to bring manufacturing back to this country,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.). “He wants to bring supply chains. I want to work with him, but let's do it in a way that's not going to do irreparable harm.”

Chris Marquette contributed to this report.