Trump's tariffs can save America's family farms like mine – if he gets it right | Opinion
If the threat of trade disputes feels familiar, it's because we're living it again – only now the stakes are even higher.
The last time tariffs became the issue of the day was a decade ago. My dad was still farming, but getting older. My sister was working with him more, thinking about how to keep our farm going while caring for her growing family. Card games with Grandma were the same as they’d always been, her refusal to let us win offering a lesson in how the world plays for keeps.
It was a fitting lesson: Global trade disputes were about to prove farms were more vulnerable than ever.
If the threat of trade disputes feels familiar, it’s because we’re living it again – only now the stakes are even higher. And as President Donald Trump weighs tariffs against hundreds of countries, it’s clearer than ever what we need to do next: Negotiate a new era of trade deals that will finally put America’s family farms first.
The last time we faced a moment like this was not long after Trump became the front-runner of the GOP primary in 2015, promising then as now to stop the world from ripping off America.
Trump's tariff talk reminds us of his first term
Farms were already headed for trouble. Production of beef, pork, chicken, milk and row crops of all kinds was rising, but by 2018 demand had leveled off for many products. Fickle markets once again meant lower prices and hard times for farmers.
That spring, Trump slapped worldwide tariffs on China and other countries, saying he’d force our largest trading partner to its knees.
Economists had long acknowledged China was messing with farmers – buying up goods to make them captive then dropping sales to depress prices, on top of all kinds of cheating – but what to do about it was a matter of debate.
Polling at the time showed farmers willing to accept the short-term pain of foreign retaliation for the long-term gain of better trade deals. But they also faced consequences: The administration ultimately gave out $28 billion in aid to farmers affected by falling sales.
Eventually, trade under Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden returned to normal other than with China. Improving prices heading into 2020 gave farmers more breathing room, and America forgot what had happened to our farms.
In farm country, however, we didn’t forget.
My dad and I walked a neighboring farm together as the family working it prepared to sell all they had. I talked with farm families whose kids I went to school with, as they fought to keep from losing everything. We drove through farmland marked by one farm after another disappearing.
How do farmers adapt? Seize the moment.
The situation today is messy, charged with challenge and opportunity for farmers, and you’ll get a range of views on what to do.
After ratcheting up tariffs on countries worldwide, the Trump administration has paused them to give countries “a chance to negotiate” and says a deal with China is close.
The talk of completing trade deals comes as the stock market has swung up and down and farmer support for tariffs has begun to slip.
I called my sister, the fourth generation in a long line of independent women forging a path forward for our farm, to see what she thinks. She couldn’t have exemplified the issue better.
Malia was building a chicken tractor – a mobile wagon that will allow us to sell eggs from pasture-raised chickens to local customers – in between preparing to plant row crops that are often sold on the world market.
She thinks that we had to draw a hard line on unfair trade, and that we’re better off if we can be self-sufficient by growing our own food. At the same time, she knows we can’t produce everything and thinks selling excess American goods abroad makes sense. A good trade deal, she said, is one that has a clear benefit for American farmers.
And that means there is really only one path: Seize the moment to make better deals.
There are ways to do this. Negotiating with one country at a time on one product at a time, as the Farm Journal Foundation economist Stephanie Mercier has suggested, would allow America to avoid the trade-offs of large deals (new markets in some places, a flood of unwanted imports from others). Targeted trade also increases America’s leverage with each country. And we need to diversify where we’re trading, so no one country can hold us hostage.
The alternatives are unfair trade or no trade, and neither is an option for the American farmer.
If Grandma were here, I think she’d say it’s high time for a re-deal.
Brian Reisinger is a writer who grew up on a family farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He contributes columns and videos for the Ideas Lab at the Journal Sentinel, where this column originally appeared. He is the author of "Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer." Reisinger works in public affairs consulting for Wisconsin-based Platform Communications. He splits his time between Sacramento, California – America’s “farm-to-fork capital,” near his wife’s family – and the family farm in Wisconsin. You can find him on X: @BrianJReisinger