Republicans who represent farm-heavy areas — places hit hard by the Trump administration’s first trade war — say they aren’t worried about history repeating itself, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated pledge to institute tariffs when he gets into office.
Agriculture experts warn that Trump’s trade campaign pledges will inevitably lead to “retaliatory tariffs” that typically wreak havoc on American farmers, just as they did the last time he was president. But GOP members say they trust Trump to figure it out.
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said she felt confident in Trump’s ability to make trade deals that won’t negatively impact her state this time around.
Trump “will wheel and deal, and he’ll use that as leverage against those that have been really taking advantage of our farmers,” Ernst told NOTUS. “We’ve been through it before. We will be fine. We’ll be fine again.”
In his first term, Trump instituted a number of tariffs, the most substantial of which were on Chinese products. Beijing responded with tariffs of its own, largely targeting the agriculture sector. The U.S. also exchanged tit-for-tat tariffs with the European Union, Canada and Mexico. The Department of Agriculture ended up shoring up the agricultural industry to the tune of $28 billion after Trump entered these trade fights and the retaliatory tariffs threatened the livelihood of millions of farmers.
Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump has promised to go much further and institute a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and an additional at least 10% fee on all other imports in his second term. U.S. agriculture is commonly singled out for retaliatory tariffs.
“You’re looking at, ‘What are the industries that your country tends to import in products from that other country.’ For a lot of countries around the world, agriculture is something that they tend to import from the U.S.,” said Chad Hart, a professor of agricultural economics at Iowa State University.
Congressional Republicans even admit as much.
“It’s important, obviously. One of the issues that we deal with in agriculture is, it’s no pun intended, but it’s a low-hanging fruit for retaliatory tariffs. And I think that’s immoral,” said Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture.
Thompson and others were fully supportive of Trump’s campaign promises of tariffs.
“I certainly support what the president will put forward,” Thompson said. “The president’s trade policy isn’t defined by tariffs. Tariffs are just a tool.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” said Rep. Rick Crawford, a member of the House’s Agriculture Committee, when asked if he supports Trump’s tariffs. “I don’t think we can just retreat to the, ‘Oh, my goodness, what’s going to happen to agriculture?’ Because we’ve seen what happens to agriculture, and it’s not all bad. The reality is, the marketplace is still going to have that demand.”
Even if that demand exists, it doesn’t appear that other countries think the U.S. needs to be the one to fulfill the supply anymore. Experts said China has sought to decrease dependence on U.S. farming in the long term, even after the trade war.
“China has already moved to substitute a lot of imports from the United States, with production from Brazil or Argentina, for example, so it’s easy for them to shift to other things,” said Karen Hansen-Kuhn, the director of trade and international strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “I think at this point we are in this state where countries have learned that they have to stand up, that they have to use the threat of retaliation to counter very bold” tariffs from the U.S.
Some Republicans were also hoping the retaliation is less likely now.
“I think that China knows that they’re dealing with a much different president. And frankly, the outcomes of five years ago may not be the same as the outcomes today,” Rep. Marc Molinaro, another member of the House Agriculture Committee, said. “My hope is that China understands that America is a dominating force in this world and takes some consideration from the fact that we have a president that’s going to put America for Americans first.”
“To say that, you know, there’s going to be all these retaliations, the reality is, China needs us more than we need them,” Crawford said.
The experts think that’s unlikely.
“Certainly, if he launches a blanket tariff, there will clearly be retaliation from trading partners, and history tells us that will affect American farmers,” Hansen-Kuhn said.
“Almost always, we should expect retaliatory tariffs,” Hart said.
During the first Trump administration, the government issued increasing amounts of aid to farmers, totaling 92% of the proceeds from the Chinese tariffs. The process of doling out the aid through an agency that “can borrow from the U.S. Treasury to stabilize the farm economy” was eased, and direct farm aid skyrocketed.
Providing cash aid is something some Republicans also weren’t willing to commit to immediately, if the tariffs go the way of 2018.
“We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the use of tariffs and the effects before we’re going to plan how to respond,” said Sen. John Boozman, a ranking member of the Senate’s Agriculture Committee.
“I think we can’t get too far ahead,” Thompson said. And Ernst is deferring to Trump: “We’ll have to talk about it and see what his overall strategy is going to be.”
However, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, another member of the Senate ag committee, issued concrete support for that direct aid to farmers. “If [Trump’s] gonna penalize them, he’s gonna help them on the back end, which he did last time.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.