How milk is getting caught in the middle of Trump's policy agenda

NBC News

28-03-2025

President Donald Trump's moves in Washington are being felt in the milking barns of an upstate New York dairy farm. There, AJ Wormuth said he's already seeing costs go up from Trump's tariffs while the threat of a wider trade war is driving down the price he gets paid for his cows' milk.
'We're getting a double whammy — we're getting lower prices and higher costs,' said Wormuth, who has 3,600 dairy cattle at his farm, Half Full Diary.
While none of Trump's policies have specifically targeted the milk industry, dairy farmers say they have been caught in the fray on a number of fronts. Their stories illustrate the fast pace of change across the federal government at the beginning of the second Trump administration, as well as the intersection of two policy areas — immigration and the economy — where voters are giving Trump markedly different grades so far.
Tariffs are increasing costs for farmers while market jitters over falling U.S. dairy sales overseas are driving down milk prices. Meanwhile, Trump's moves to step up deportations could affect the industry's workforce, since immigrants are estimated to make up about half of dairy workers. And concerns are growing about the risk of bird flu, which has been spreading among dairy cattle for the past year.
'There's just so much uncertainty about everything right now,' said Annie Watson, who has 70 cattle on an organic dairy farm in Maine. 'As dairy farmers, we work in three-year cycles — from when a calf is born on our farms until it becomes a milking cow. Nothing happens quickly on our dairy farms. So to have policies put forth that take effect very, very quickly, it can often be challenging for those of us that work in this sort of cycle.'
Trade war tensions
Trump has said he plans to announce sweeping tariffs on goods from across the globe on April 2, and he has already put additional 20% tariffs on imports from China along with a 25% tariff on all imports of automobiles, steel and aluminum. The president has threatened, but so far delayed, a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada.
In response to Trump's tariff moves, other countries have vowed to retaliate with their own tariffs on American-made products. China and the European Union have already announced tariffs on certain U.S. goods, including dairy products.
Those retaliatory tariffs could drive down global demand for U.S. dairy, leading to an oversupply of milk in the U.S. That would create a supply and demand imbalance, driving down the price farmers get for their milk, though the price American shoppers pay for dairy products in the grocery store might not budge much. That's because a number of factors go into setting the price of finished dairy products, such as transportation, marketing and labor costs.
'Anything that is disrupting the flow of trade is obviously concerning,' said Jaime Castaneda, the executive vice president for policy and strategy at the National Milk Producers Federation. 'I think that the farm community is very concerned about broad tariff applications, as opposed to more targeted and more focused tariffs.'
Concern over the tariffs has already contributed to a significant drop in the price farmers are paid for their milk since Trump came into office, Castaneda said.
But there are potential upsides for dairy farmers if Trump's trade war is ultimately able to reduce trade barriers to other countries like Canada and European Union nations, which have placed restrictions on American dairy products, said Castaneda.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said last week that her department was looking into ways to 'potentially mitigate any economic catastrophes that could happen to some of our farmers' as a result of Trump's tariffs. During Trump's first term, the federal government made direct payments to farmers who lost sales from retaliatory tariffs China put on American agriculture products.
Rising costs, funding cuts
In Maine, Watson said she is worried about the cost of her feed increasing if Trump goes through with a threat to put a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports. Being relatively close to the Canadian border, most of her feed comes from Canada, and she said the tariffs could add $1,200 a month to her grain bill.
'It would be easier to bear if we were not in a situation where many of our organic dairy farmers have been financially underwater for many years due to market factors,' said Watson, who is also president of the Maine Dairy Association. 'Many farmers, I think, will just try to put their heads down and bear it without accruing too much more debt, but so many of us are behind on our bills already.'
Higher costs are also a concern for Wormuth. He said he started a barn renovation sooner than planned after he was told the price for the new metal stalls would be going up, from $85,000 to $106,000, once Trump's 25% tariff on steel and aluminum went into effect earlier this month.
'We can't just go to the market and raise our prices because all of our costs are higher, so we are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place,' he said.
At the same time, dairy farmers have been impacted by cuts and funding freezes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency cut funding for a program that helps schools and food banks buy products from local farmers, like lunch milk from nearby dairy farms. Other farmers have been left waiting to get reimbursed for millions of dollars in grant funding previously awarded to them for conservation projects on their farms, like installing solar panels on barn rooftops.
Immigration fears
Dairy farms are heavily reliant on labor from immigrants, who work at dairies that produce 79% of America's milk, according to the National Milk Producers Federation. Work on dairy farms can involve early hours, long days and weekend shifts year-round in harsh weather.
'It is very labor-intensive, hands-on work. It's not glamorous. It's hard work, it's valuable work, but it is absolutely something that we as a society have moved away from valuing,' said Watson. 'So we rely on immigrant labor. They come ready to work and they do tremendous work on our farms. The idea of losing that workforce, it could be devastating for the dairy industry.'
For dairy workers who aren't born in the U.S., it can be difficult to get the proper work authorization because there isn't a specific visa available for dairy workers, unlike other agricultural industries in which employers can bring workers to the U.S. on temporary visas during the harvest season.
Dairy workers don't qualify for those temporary agriculture worker visas because they work year-round. Members of Congress and the dairy industry have tried and failed multiple times over the past two decades to create a visa program for dairy workers.
That's left dairy farmers worried their workers could get swept up in the Trump administration's stepped-up deportation efforts. The National Milk Producers Federation estimates that if the U.S. dairy industry lost its foreign-born workforce, it would nearly double retail milk prices and cost the total U.S. economy more than $32 billion.
One dairy farmer, who didn't want to publicly share his name for fear of retaliation against his workforce, said they are hearing a lot of fear among their workers, who are trying to avoid going out into public and preparing their families for the possibility that they get deported.
'They see the ads on TV saying if you're not here legally, you should leave, and those types of things just creates a lot of fear and anxiety,' the farmer said. 'Our guys are like family. They've been here with us a long time, they're important to us, but you can tell that they're scared and just unsure what's going to happen.'
Bird flu spread
The uncertainty around tariffs and immigration comes as the industry is also closely watching the spread of avian flu in dairy cattle over the past year.
So far, the fatality rate of infected cows has been low and most are able to recover in a few weeks. But the infections do lead to a temporary decrease in milk production that can reduce farmers' income.
'The last thing we need right now, on top of all the volatility from the tariffs and the immigration threat and those things, would be to lose a drop in production for bird flu,' said Wormuth, who worries that bird flu could start to spread among New York dairy cattle when birds start migrating back north in the spring.
The Trump administration has yet to make any significant changes to the federal response to avian flu in dairy cattle. Under the Biden administration, the USDA provided funding to dairy farms to help reduce the spread of the virus, cover veterinary costs and compensate farmers who lost milk because of sick cows.
The USDA started a voluntary milk-testing program in December, during the final days of the Biden administration, but some states have been slow to put the system in place. Public and animal health experts have said widespread testing is critical to containing virus cases that might otherwise go undetected, giving the variants more opportunities to spread to animals and humans.
The dairy industry is encouraging the Trump administration to continue the development of a vaccine against avian flu for dairy cattle, said Castaneda. But he is concerned some countries may not accept milk from vaccinated cows, even though pasteurization has been shown to kill the virus — creating one more element of uncertainty about what's ahead for dairy farmers.
'I don't think that a vaccine should be mandatory, but having a vaccine available, that's something that we are certainly looking to have as another tool to deal with this issue,' said Castaneda. 'This is our first time we have encountered this. We don't know if it's going to be a recurring issue or a one-time thing.'