logo
Farmers take a wait-and-see approach to Trump's trade war

Farmers take a wait-and-see approach to Trump's trade war

Fast Company13-05-2025

Minnesota farmer Dan Glessing isn't ready to get too upset over President Donald Trump's trade wars.
Farm country voted heavily for Trump last November. Now Glessing and many other farmers are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the Republican president's disputes with China and other international markets.
China normally would buy about one row out of every four of the Minnesota soybean crop and took in nearly $13 billion worth of soybeans from the U.S. as a whole last year. More than half of U.S. soybeans are exported internationally, with roughly half of those going to China, so it's a critical market.
Trump last month raised U.S. tariffs on products from China to 145%, and China retaliated with 125%. But Monday's announcement of a 90-day truce between the two countries backed up the reluctance of many farmers to hit the panic button.
More good news came in an updated forecast from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday that projected higher corn exports and only slightly lower corn prices. The report also predicted somewhat lower soybean exports but higher domestic consumption, resulting in higher prices. Soybean futures surged.
After he finished planting his soybean crop on Monday, Glessing said he was excited by the news and hopes to see more progress. But he said he wasn't really surprised.
Tariffs, weather and other uncertainty
On a bright, sunny day last week, as he began planting soybeans, Glessing said tariffs were only one of the things he's worried about — and not necessarily the biggest. Farming, after all, is an enterprise built on loose soil, the whims of weather and other uncontrollable factors.
'Am I concerned about tariffs? Yeah. I mean, there's uncertainty that comes with that,' Glessing said. 'Is that the number one driving factor in these poor commodity prices the last two years? No.'
As he steered his 25-year-old Case IH tractor over a gently rolling field near the town of Waverly, he towed a planter that inserted his seeds through the stubble of last year's corn crop. As he laid down the long rows, he rumbled past a pond where wild swans paddled about.
Riding shotgun was Georgie the Corgi, who alternated between roaming around his cab and half-dozing at his feet.
Perhaps more skeptical than Glessing is Matt Griggs, one of many soybean farmers in Tennessee paying close attention to the trade war. On Monday, he said the ripple effects on farmers might still be coming.
'We're only on a 90-day pause,' Griggs said. 'Who knows what is going to come after that?'
Joe Janzen, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, said the commodity markets have largely shaken off the initial shock of the trade war, including Trumps' declaration of April 2 as 'Liberation Day,' when he announced stiff worldwide tariffs.
'Our markets have largely rebounded and are back where we were around April Second,' Janzen said. 'Tariffs have not had a major impact on prices yet.'
Even something that might seem like good news — ideal planting conditions across much of the Midwest — has its downside. The potential for bigger crops sent prices downward, Glessing noted. High interest rates, seed and fertilizer costs pose additional challenges.
'There's so many other factors besides just tariffs and my market price,' Glessing said.
Looking for signs of progress
But Glessing said he was encouraged by that morning's news of a trade deal with the United Kingdom, and said he hopes the current uncertainty in talks with China and other countries ultimately leads to better trade deals going forward.
Glessing had finished planting his corn the day before on the other half of a field that he rents from his father's cousin, split between 45 acres of corn and 45 acres of beans. It's at the farm where his grandfather grew up, and it's part of the approximately 700 acres he plants on average. He locked in those planting decisions months earlier as he made deals for seeds, fertilizer and other supplies.
Back on his 'home farm' closer to Waverly — where his late grandfather's house, made of local brick, still stands and a cacophony of house sparrow songs filled the air — Glessing was pleased to spot the first signs of corn he had planted there about 10 days earlier poking above the soil.
Waverly is about an hour west of Minneapolis. Its most famous resident was Democratic former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. It's in the congressional district represented by Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer.
Glessing's post as president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau puts him in close touch with other influential politicians, too. He and his wife, Seena, were Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar's guests at the Capitol for Trump's inauguration in January. Glessing declined to say who he voted for.
The Glessings have three kids, milk about 75 dairy cows, and grow corn, soybeans and alfalfa on a combination of parcels they own or rent. He uses the alfalfa and corn primarily to feed his cows. He sells his soybeans to a processing plant in Mankato, where some of them become soybean meal he adds to his animal feed. The milk from his cows goes to a co-op cheese plant in Litchfield that sells internationally.
Because Glessing has local buyers locked in and doesn't directly export his crops, he's partially cushioned from the volatility of world markets. But he's quick to point out that everything in the agricultural economy is interconnected.
Lessons learned during Trump's first trade war
On his farm near Humboldt, Tennessee, roughly midway between Memphis and Nashville, Griggs weathered the 2018 trade war during Trump's first term and said he feels more prepared this time around.
'Back in 2018, prices were about the same as what they are now, and due to the trade war with China, prices dropped around 15%,' he said. 'They dropped significantly lower, and they dropped in a hurry, and due to that, we lost a lot of demand from China.'
Griggs said exports to China never fully rebounded. But he doesn't think the impact of the current dispute will be nearly as drastic.
Griggs — who raises approximately 1,600 acres of cotton, corn, soybeans and wheat — said tariffs were just one consideration as he planned out this year's crops. Growing a variety of crops helps him minimize the risk that comes with weather, volatile prices, and now the prospect of a trade war.
Griggs said he's going to be watching for opportunities to sell when market volatility causes upticks in prices.
'The main thing I learned in 2018 was that if you do have a price period where prices have risen some, go ahead and take advantage of it instead of waiting for it to go higher,' said Griggs. 'Because when it comes to the tariffs and everything, the markets can be very unpredictable. So my lesson learned was, 'Don't hold out for a home run, be satisfied with a double.''
He said a temporary subsidy called the Market Facilitation Program helped soybean farmers withstand some of the losses last time could help if something similar is revived this year. But he said no farmer wants to make a living off government subsidies.
'We just want fair access to markets,' Griggs said. 'And a fair price for the products we produce.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The Wiretap: Facial Recognition, Amazon Ring, And Surveillance Of The LA Protests
The Wiretap: Facial Recognition, Amazon Ring, And Surveillance Of The LA Protests

Forbes

time30 minutes ago

  • Forbes

The Wiretap: Facial Recognition, Amazon Ring, And Surveillance Of The LA Protests

The Wiretap is your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here. The protests in LA are being captured by all manner of surveillance devices. But federal and local police have different restrictions on what they can do with the footage (Photo by) 'I have all of you on camera. I'm going to come to your house.' Those were the words coming from an LAPD officer in a helicopter over LA protestors, according to the LA Times. The implicit threat, according to some privacy advocates, was that the cops would use facial recognition software to identify and locate those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. It's not quite so easy to do that, though. A source close to the agency, who was not authorized to talk on record, told Forbes that LAPD will be going through camera footage - whether shot from a helicopter, surveillance cams or bodycams - and try to identify people. However, the LAPD can only search for matches from police-owned arrest records, namely, mugshots. Its own rules don't allow it to search for matches across other sources, such as social media. Federal agents, however, don't have the same restrictions. Any federal agent using Clearview or an alternative can take the same footage and run facial images to find matches across photos scraped from social sites. One of Clearview's best-known federal customers is ICE, which typically uses it in child exploitation cases. It's unclear how often the agency uses it for immigration enforcement. Neither ICE nor the LAPD had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. Law enforcement has another potential source for protest footage: video from Amazon Ring cameras or its competitors. Though Amazon has stopped cops requesting information directly over the Ring Neighbours social platform, federal and local cops can demand data recorded by those devices with a court order. The video could then be used to identify protestors. While the source close to LAPD said they weren't aware of any specific uses of Ring around this week's events, they said it's certainly a capability that exists. Meanwhile, concerned citizens have also been using Neighbors to share footage of ICE raids and agents in the L.A. area, either to warn about them or to celebrate the actions. In footage from Monday, identified by a Forbes' reporter, a Ring user shared footage they claimed showed ICE targeting laborers at a local Home Depot. Another warned about ICE agents at a mall and a Costco. Amazon Ring didn't comment on record, though a spokesperson pointed Forbes to guidelines that prohibit users posting on 'topics that cause inevitable frictions like politics and election information,' as well as 'highly debated social issues.' Its moderators might be busier than normal this week. Got a tip on surveillance or cybercrime? Get me on Signal at +1 929-512-7964. DOGE pre-Elon Musk's departure and break up with President Trump. (Photo by) The Supreme Court has given a green light to the Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security Administration data. The decision came after the Trump administration had filed an emergency application to lift an injunction from a federal judge in Maryland. In its decision, the Supreme Court said DOGE staff needed the access to do their job. While the White House cheered the decision as a victory for fighting fraud and waste in federal agencies, opponents said the ruling 'will enable President Trump and DOGE's affiliates to steal Americans' private and personal data.' A cyber researcher found a way to identify phone numbers linked to any Google account. Google has since fixed the issue, which may have exposed users to SIM swapping scams. The DOJ has launched an offensive on the dark web marketplace BidenCash, where users buy and sell stolen credit card and personal information. The agency has taken down 145 domains across both the standard web and the darknet associated with the bazaar. The service has so far generated over $17 million in revenue, according to Justice officials. A man who controls much of the infrastructure that underpins Telegram also controls other companies with links to Russian intelligence agency FSB, according to an investigation by the Organized Crimes and Corruption Reporting Project's Russian partner, Important Stories. Telegram has not responded to the allegations. The Guardian has launched a new way to tip its reporters securely with an app simply called 'Secure Messaging.' It sounds pretty neat: 'The technology behind Secure Messaging conceals the fact that messaging is taking place at all by making the communication indistinguishable from other data sent to and from the app by our millions of regular users. By using the Guardian app, other users are effectively providing 'cover' and helping us to protect sources.' President Trump has been unsurprisingly careless with his personal iPhone, taking calls from numbers he doesn't recognize. That's despite repeatedly being warned about the heightened risks of foreign surveillance and interception that come with using a device with a 'broadly circulated number,' according to a report in The Atlantic.

Dimon says Trump tariffs may make 'the soft landing a little bit softer' instead of making the 'ship go down'
Dimon says Trump tariffs may make 'the soft landing a little bit softer' instead of making the 'ship go down'

Yahoo

time31 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Dimon says Trump tariffs may make 'the soft landing a little bit softer' instead of making the 'ship go down'

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon sounds a little more optimistic about the effect tariffs may have on the US economy over the next several months. 'Maybe in July, August, September, October, you'll start to see 'did it have an effect?'' Dimon said of tariffs while speaking Tuesday afternoon at a Morgan Stanley conference in New York. 'My guess is it did, hopefully not dramatic. May just make the soft landing a little bit softer as opposed to the ship go down." His guess is that the effect of tariffs will cause employment to 'come down, or come down a little bit,' while 'inflation will go up a little bit.' Read more: What Trump's tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet Dimon wasn't the only big bank executive who offered his views Tuesday about how the tariff picture may play out in the near future. Clients of Citigroup's (C) global investment bank are looking at a 10% 'floor' on tariff levels and are currently evaluating a baseline of between 10% and 20%, Viswas Raghavan, Citigroup's head of banking, said while speaking earlier Tuesday at the same conference. 'Look, there is a lot of anxiety,' Raghavan said when referring to the impact of the looming tariffs on corporate boardrooms considering new deals. Citigroup expects its second quarter investment banking fees to be up in the 'mid-single digits' compared to the same period last year. In overall trading, revenue is expected to rise in the 'mid- to high-single digits' from the prior year, according to Raghavan. However, Raghavan did say that Citi expects its firmwide credit costs to rise by 'a few 100 million dollars' compared to the $2.7 billion it reported in the first quarter. Morgan Stanley (MS) CEO Ted Pick said the second quarter did start 'slow, really pausing in a big way,' after the Trump administration's early April 'Liberation Day' tariff announcements. But 'now it has picked up and I think we'll see how the last couple weeks go, but looks like it's going to finish strong.' In this current period, 'I do think investment banking, specifically, is a tale of two quarters.' Bankers also hailed a push by the Trump administration to reconsider some capital rules that require them to set aside certain buffers in the event of bad times. "We actually are relevant in not just powering the real economy, but to be helpful when there is a wobble ... And that's why I think it is opportune for a repositioning of some of the regulatory framework," Pick said Tuesday. Michelle Bowman, Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision, said in a speech last Friday that the central bank plans to host a conference next month meant to bring together bankers, academics, and other experts to examine whether the numerous capital requirements for large banks make sense. "I would like to be part of fixing the system and making it safer and helping the smaller banks," Dimon said. David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

How Chinese imports are skirting Trump's tariffs
How Chinese imports are skirting Trump's tariffs

Yahoo

time32 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

How Chinese imports are skirting Trump's tariffs

There's a huge drop underway in Chinese imports entering the US — from China. But Chinese goods are arriving anyway, via other Asian nations such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. That may be good news for shoppers, because it means cheap Chinese goods are still making it to US stores despite the higher costs imposed by President Trump's new import taxes. But shifting trade patterns will surely get Trump's attention, and the tariff-happy president could easily put a stop to it by raising import taxes on what are turning out to be loophole countries. Trump's aggressive tariff regime is meant to make most imported products more expensive to encourage more domestic production. But Trump's uneven approach has created opportunities for a kind of trade arbitrage that was all but inevitable. As things stand now, Trump has imposed new import taxes of 30% on most goods from China but only 10% on imports from most other nations. That 20% differential is a big advantage for the less-tariffed countries. Sure enough, trade data shows that Chinese exporters are almost certainly "transshipping" goods to the US by passing them through neighboring countries. Chinese data shows that exports to the US dropped 35% in May compared with a year earlier. But during the same period, Chinese exports to six other Asian nations jumped 15%, including a 22% increase in exports to Vietnam and Thailand, a 12% jump in exports to Singapore, and an 11% rise in shipments to Indonesia. "[China's] direct exports to the US are down sharply, but its exports to all kinds of places across Asia are up massively," economist Robin Brooks of the Brookings Institution posted on social media on June 9. "These are obviously transshipments to the US via third countries."The US Department of Commerce hasn't yet published trade data for May, but data for April shows the mirror image of the Chinese data. Imports from China fell 20% from 2024 levels, while there was a 48% jump in Vietnamese imports, a 32% jump in shipments from Thailand, and a 16% increase in goods from Malaysia. Trade experts have been predicting this shift since Trump began imposing new import taxes in February, because it's the same thing that happened during the trade wars Trump waged during his first presidential term. Vietnam, in particular, was a big beneficiary of Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018 and 2019. While imports from China fell by 11% from 2017 to 2019, imports from Vietnam boomed by 43%. Read more: What Trump's tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet Since Trump's first trade war, many Asian producers and their US customers have carefully diversified so they're not overdependent on China. The US now imports less clothing from China, as one example, and more from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. Transshipment can mean that some products are fully assembled in China and simply make a brief stopover in another country before heading to the US so that their country of origin isn't China. Governments tend to discourage that, however, because those countries gain little from merely serving as a way station for Chinese products headed to the US. Plus, it may attract unwanted attention from Trump. Chinese companies are also increasingly building their own production facilities outside of China. "There are two ways to transship," Jason Judd, executive director of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, told Yahoo Finance. "In one, you're just cheating. In the other, you disassemble your product in China and send the inputs and the know-how to a new place." In Cambodia, for example, most of the companies making goods that go to the US have Chinese ownership. Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs — on ice for the moment — are meant, in part, to target countries that are way stations for Chinese products. When Trump announced those nation-by-nation tariffs on April 2, Asian trade partners other than China got hit with some of the highest rates. The new tariff on Chinese imports was 34%. For Cambodia, the new tariff rate was 49%. Vietnam: 46%. Thailand: 36%. Indonesia: 32%. Malaysia: 24%. Those rates weren't based specifically on transshipment of Chinese products but on the size of the trade deficit in goods each country has with the US. The larger the deficit, the higher the tariff. Read more: 5 ways to tariff-proof your finances Trump suspended those tariffs on April 9, following a week of mayhem in financial markets. That eventually left the tariff rates at 30% on most imports from China and 10% on most imports from every other country. But Trump said the reciprocal tariffs could go back into effect if nations don't make trade deals with him one by one by a July 9 deadline. By then, a boom in imports from Asian nations other than China will give Trump plenty of justification for more reciprocal tariffs. But he may choose to overlook it. Trump seems to have a much bigger trade beef with China than he does with other nations. His advisers are also telling him that high tariffs across the board could mean shocking price increases on clothing, electronics, appliances, and many other things just as Americans start their back-to-school shopping this summer. After that will come a Christmas season possibly starring Trump as the Grinch. So Trump might end up talking tough on China and looking the other way as the country's products enter the side door. That would make stealthy Chinese imports an unintended innovation triggered by Trump's trade war. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store