Aaron Lehman’s Soyabean Farm in the heart of Iowa feels like an oasis of calm in turbulence and the effort of the second term of President Donald Trump. Still, everything that could change in a few weeks.
Lehman is advocating for the influence of a potential trade war that was hatched in Washington, which he says could lay a low American corn belt and harmlessly harm American standing with his neighbors.
“Farmers understand that trade relations are going to the staircase, where you work hard to build them, but get down on the elevator – very, very quickly,” Lehman said in the living room of his farm house about 20 miles north of the Iowe des Moines.
“The long -term effect is that countries around the world will no longer see us as a reliable partner.”
It was a stormy week in American trade policy. Trump announced last weekend that he would impose 25 percent of Tariff Mexico and Canada, saying that they did not do enough to stop the flow of migrants and illegal drugs of Fentanil to the United States. Then, after the last minute of conversation with the leaders of the two countries, he agreed to give them both a 30-day return.
The same was not the case for China. The 10 -partenous levy that has imposed all the Chinese imports still stand. And many in Iowa believe that it is only a matter of time before the tariffs in the American northern and southern neighbors would return.
The introductory salvo of the new trade war sent a cold through the middle west. Canada, Mexico and China together make half of all American agricultural exports. Last year alone, the US sold more than $ 30 billion in Mexico agricultural products, $ 29 billion Canada and $ 26 billion to China, according to the Statistics of the American Farm Bureau.
Suddenly, farmers faced a spectrum of retaliation and conflict possibilities to a fully extent that some fear could decree on the American rural heart.
Farmers in the area of the country that has become susceptible to Trump are now worried that the president’s tariffs, although suspended at the last minute, permanently damaged the image of the US with the eyes of the most important trade partners.
“We crossed from the sellers of the election to the last resort,” said Mark Mueller, a farmer from near Waterloo in northeast Iowa.
Few countries are better embodied by the agricultural wealth of the Central West than Iowa. It is a land of huge corn fields that extends how much the eye can see, a landscape broken from the occasional silo grain, hay bales, or low-pierced barn. Pigs outweigh people more than seven to one.
It is also Trump’s land. Although Iowa voted for Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it supported Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
More than a fifth economy of Iowa – or $ 53.1 billion – is related to agriculture, from crop production and livestock to nutrition and food production. It is the largest manufacturer of corn, pig, egg and ethanol and a top sole breeder. This makes it particularly vulnerable to any fall in agricultural exports.
“Free trade is the backbone of the economy in the Middle West,” said Ernie Goss, an economist at Creighton University in Omahi, Nebraska. “What we have here is some of the most productive agriculture on the face of the country, and the domestic market is nowhere near that it is large enough to absorb all the goods produced here. You must have international markets.”
The last volley of tariff threats caused painful memories of a trade war that Trump freed in his first term. Among the most striking moves was Trump impose duties at $ 300 billion in Chinese goods. In 2018, Beijing responded by slapping 25 percent of the tariff on imports of American soybeans, beef, pork, wheat, corn and cheeses.
The conflict ended with the countries signed by the 2020 trade agreement under which Beijing has committed to increase the purchase of US goods and services. But since then, he has been buying more grain than countries like Argentina and Brazil, which in the United States have pretended as the best Chinese corn supplier in 2023.
In the last trade war, “Many of our Asian customers have started developing relations with soy manufacturers in South America, and they have taken more and more of our market,” said Lehman, who is also the president of the Iowa farmer’s union. “And we didn’t bring him back.”
Not all farmers in Iowa opposed the way Trump used the threat of tariffs to achieve the key goal of politics – which stood illegal immigration.
“It was a strategy he was supposed to use. . . Bring these countries to the negotiating table, “said Steve Kuiper, the fourth -generation farmer of Iowa, who grows corn and soybeans in Marion County, southeast of des Moines. After all,” The President has only four years to achieve everything he promised him, so he must Things immediately go to gain attraction. “
Still, he is pessimistic that Mexico and Canada will be able to deliver his promises to Trump to strengthen the security of the border on time. “It is necessary for these things to happen forever, and they only have 30 days,” he said.
The prospects for another circle of trade tension comes with American farmers who are already in a tight place, affected by the fall of crop prices and higher costs. Net revenue from farms, a wide measure of profit, was 181.9 billion USD 2022, but it is estimated that it was $ 140.7 billion in 2024 in 2024, according to the US Ministry of Agriculture – a drop of 23 percent.
“This [trade war] It doesn’t come on good time, “said Rick Juchems, a farmer from Plainfield in northeast Iowa.” The prices of goods are low, and the price of intake such as seeds and fertilizers increases. “Sources from the Iowa corn breeders Association have said that many farmers produced from 100 USD after loss from hectares.
Investments in new equipment are reduced, which reflects a wider downfall, Juchems said. “I have friends who have lost their jobs by selling agricultural machines for reduced demand. Parcels are full of unsold tractors.”
Manufacturers of agricultural equipment such as Deere, Kinze Manufacturing and Bridgestone/Firestone have shed hundreds of jobs in Iowa since last year.
Still, the prospect of the finances of agricultural holdings could become even darker if Trump does well in his threat of importation of imports. Fertilizer, for example, could become much more expensive, since more than 80 percent of US potassium potassium supply – a key ingredient – comes from Canada.
But perhaps the most devastating effect of the tariff debate is the uncertainty she has launched, just ahead of the key spring planting season.
“We will get as long as we know what is coming,” Juchems said. “But things are changing all the time. I’m sure the whole world laughs at us.”
Lehman said farmers were trying to remain optimistic. “They tell me they hope that colder heads will prevail and this dispute will result in good trade agreements,” Lehman said. “But they are also preparing for the worst.”
