Under the on-again, off-again tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump, fertilizer costs are up, future grain prices are slumping and new farm equipment like tractors and combines have become more expensive.
But Brian Bays, a corn and soybean farmer in Madison County, feels confident the short-term pain created by Trump’s trade war will lead to long-term gains for Hoosier growers.
“I’m OK with it,” he said. “We need fair trade. I just want a fair, level playing field, and I think President Trump is trying to pull that into an actual everyday occurrence.”
Bays isn’t alone. Farmers’ optimism in May climbed to a four-year high as more growers anticipate that tariffs will have no impact or a positive impact on their operations, according to Purdue University’s Ag Economy Barometer.
That number dipped slightly in June, but still remains far higher compared to farmers’ sentiment just before Trump was elected, when growers’ optimism hit an eight-year low.
America’s most farming- dependent counties in November overwhelmingly backed Trump, who won an average of 77.7% of the vote in those counties. That held true in Indiana, the seventh largest agriculture exporter in the nation. Trump won 88 out of the state’s 92 counties.
Now, Hoosier farmers’ confidence in Trump has many of them cheering on his risky gambit to negotiate better deals with the nation’s largest trade partners, including Mexico, Canada and China — even as that gambit is pinching their pocketbooks.
“For agriculture and the economy as a whole, I think that President Trump and the tariffs is what we need,” Bays said.
FARMERS QUESTION FREE TRADE
But whether tariffs lead to better trade deals and higher grain prices for growers remains deeply uncertain, explained Jim Mintert, an emeritus professor and former director of Purdue’s Center for Commercial Agriculture.
During Trump’s first-term attempt using tariffs, the U.S. lost an estimated $27 billion in agriculture exports with trade partners, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The administration’s approach to foreign trade in its first term marked a major departure from long-standing U.S. policy that mostly focused on removing barriers to open up more markets for farmers — an approach that has largely been successful, Mintert argued.
Now, Trump in his second term has again turned to his controversial tariff policy to deliberately disrupt foreign markets, and U.S. farmers’ views have shifted in sync with Trump’s approach.
In 2020, nearly 50% of all farmers reported they “strongly agreed” that “free trade benefits agriculture and most other American industries,” according to Purdue’s ag barometer. In May, that number had dropped to 28%. Farmers who disagreed or strongly disagreed with that statement rose from 8% in 2020 to 18% in May.
“I think what we’re picking up is this idea that at least a portion of the folks that we surveyed feel like (Trump’s) approach makes sense,” Mintert said. “For whatever reason, that’s resonated with a lot of people, and it’s resonated in agriculture.”
Bays said he still fully supports free trade and open access to foreign markets, but current trade agreements with many countries have become “lopsided” against the U.S. He said he views Trump’s tariffs as a shrewd negotiating tactic to land fairer trade agreements, not a long-term policy meant to block free trade.
“We need to talk about tariffs, and each country has to come to the table and offer up their best opportunity for everybody, and not be punitive,” Bays said.
Not all Indiana farmers are in total agreement with Trump’s tactics. Blake Burgin, who grows hay and soybeans in Clark County, said he thinks Trump has gone too far with his tariffs against Canada and Mexico.
“I don’t know if he should be as rough on them as what he is,” Burgin said. “They’re our neighbors. But in the end, I do think he’s a businessman, and I think he’ll get it straightened out.”
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