This week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the trade deficit jumped 34% in January from the month before. That’s largely because many importers have been trying to bring in extra goods ahead of the Trump administration’s new tariffs.
All the uncertainty around U.S. trade policy and the response abroad is also having an impact on American exporters, including the agricultural sector.
Right now, farmers are starting to think about what they’re going to plant this coming spring.
But now that China has slapped retaliatory tariffs on big export crops like soybeans, “some of those producers are thinking, ‘Well, should I be planting as many soybeans as normal if we’re potentially going to be losing some of that demand?’” said Naomi Blohm, senior market advisor at Total Farm Marketing.
In some parts of the country, farmers might decide to diversify and grow crops that can be sold domestically.
“They might decide that they would plant barley instead of soybeans, or they could plant oats,” Blohm said. But farmers don’t always have that option.
Associate professor Aleks Schaefer at Oklahoma State University said that the climate and soil in his state dictate what farmers can grow.
“If I’m a farmer in Oklahoma, I don’t have the choice, really, between wheat — which I might export — versus apples — which I would want to sell domestically,” he said.
Either way, Schaefer said that farmers are going to have to make tough decisions on what to plant not knowing how tariffs will play out.
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