For the last half-century, the U.S. has been hemorrhaging small, family farms. Massive corporations have gobbled up vast swaths of rural America, turning thriving communities into ghost towns surrounded by polluting factory farms and fields drenched with toxic pesticides. But instead of helping U.S. farmers thrive again, Donald Trump has only worsened this crisis. And he’s doing it again with his slapdash tariff policy. 

How bad will it get? We don’t have a crystal ball, but we can look to the recent past for answers, as this isn’t the first time untargeted Trump tariffs have bulldozed through rural America. 

His 2018 tariffs and the ensuing trade war led to hundreds of farm bankruptcies and shuttered tens of thousands of small farms. The administration responded with a multi-billion-dollar government bailout — which largely went to Big Ag corporations. 

Tariffs, which make imports more expensive, can benefit U.S. farmers if coupled with other protective policies. But as Trump’s previous trade war shows, his tariffs promise only chaos and increasing financial stress for small, independent farmers. 

Trump’s First Trade War Made An Existing Farm Crisis Worse

Decades of bad farm policies have made U.S. farmers ultra-reliant on export markets. From free-trade agreements to Farm Bills, these policies encouraged farms to grow as much as possible of a few commodity crops. This system supplies commodities for sale abroad, as well as cheap feedstock for domestic food processors.

It has also reshaped rural communities, dwindling the number of small and medium-sized, sustainable, family-owned farms that grow a diversity of crops and animals. Instead, we now have fewer but larger industrial operations. Today, the average farmer can’t even break even on farming alone, despite the soaring profits of Big Ag middlemen.

Our food policy is in dire need of an overhaul. Tariffs, combined with other protective and supportive policies, can help. They can rebuild local economies, jobs, and food markets. 

But Trump’s 2018 tariffs weren’t paired with investment and protection of local markets, and they accomplished none of this. Instead, they just jabbed at a key weakness of the U.S. agricultural system — reliance on exports — and plunged thousands of farms into crisis.

Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods sparked a trade war. China retaliated with its own tariffs, making American exports to China more expensive.

China is a major destination for U.S. agricultural goods; when it cut its purchases, U.S. farms lost $26 billion in just a year and a half. U.S. soybean farmers are especially reliant on exports to China, and Trump’s trade war plummeted soybean exports to China by nearly 75% in 2018.

In 2019 alone, 599 farms filed for bankruptcy, the most since 2011. Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s trade war contributed to massive farm losses. From 2017 to 2022, 38,000 farms of 1 to 9 acres stopped operations.

Big Ag Makes Bank from Trade War Bailouts

Small and medium farms have struggled to survive in unfair, volatile markets for years. Trump’s trade war worsened this trend. Between 2017 and 2022, the number of farms earning $500,000 or more grew while all other categories of smaller-earning farms saw losses.

With its trade war, the Trump administration knew it had manufactured a crisis for U.S. farmers. But its response most benefited the biggest and richest operations.

For example, for one bailout program, a study found that the top 10% of recipients received more than half of all the money. The top 1% received an average of $183,331, while the bottom 80% received less than $5,000 on average.

The trade war also led the U.S. government to purchase goods from farmers directly to help fill in where exports had fallen. However, millions of dollars of these government purchases went not to struggling small farmers, but instead to multinational corporations.

That includes JBS and Tyson Foods, titans of the meat industry. For pork, they control 35% of the U.S. market. The U.S. government bought more than $77 million-worth of pork from JBS and more than $28 million from Tyson, little of which went to the farmers actually growing those hogs.

Ultimately, Trump’s trade war led to bailouts that funneled taxpayer dollars into the pockets of Big Ag corporations. The impact of the tariffs failed to help wide swaths of small farmers, forcing many to shutter. 

Trump’s Tariff Tantrums Today

On the campaign trail in 2023, Trump proclaimed to have been “the most pro-farmer president you’ve ever had.” But Trump’s first trade war tells a different story — of reckless disregard for American farmers and loyalty to the Big Ag corporations ruining their livelihoods. 

This year’s tariff announcements have been even more chaotic and wide-ranging. They’ve jumped in number from week to week and have been slapped on imports from almost every country on the planet. 

And while multinational corporations can move production elsewhere to avoid tariffs and protect their bottom line, U.S. farmers will still have seeds in the ground here. 

A recent deal with China has lowered both countries’ tariff rates for now — but with Trump behind the wheel, we have no idea how long this will last, what comes next, or what the ultimate impact of his chaotic tariff policies will be. 

For farmers to thrive, we need to overhaul our food policy. We need fair prices, regional food markets, and policies that reward sustainable, humane production models. These could be paired with smart, strategic tariffs in a cohesive suite of policy changes toward a fair and sustainable food system. Farmers, families, communities, and the planet would benefit.

Trump’s tariffs will accomplish none of these things. Instead, they only promise chaos and hardship for America’s farmers.