Trump tariffs target top trading partners for agriculture; Opponents concerned about inflation and lost export markets

The new tariffs announced this week (April 2, 2025) by U.S. President Donald Trump include 10% duties on all goods imported to the US, plus an extra levy on 60-some nations with the highest trade barriers.

Among those are top ag trading partners China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Canada and Mexico have already seen 25% US tariffs, including on steel, aluminum and automobiles.

“With today’s actions, we’re also standing up for our great farmers and ranchers, who are brutalized by nations all over the world. Brutalized.” (applause)

Trump cited one example.

“Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300-percent tariff on many of our dairy products. They do the first little can of milk, they do the first little carton of milk at a very low price, but after that it gets bad and then it gets up to 275, 300-percent.”

And, Trump says, it’s not just Canada.

“Through non-tariff barriers, the European Union bans imports of most American poultry. Australia bans, and they’re wonderful people, but they ban American beef, yet we imported 3 (B) billion dollars of Australian beef from them, just last year, alone.”

Trump complained the US is subsidizing our competitors, keeping their producers in business at the expense of ours.

“This is why we have the big deficits, this is why we have the amount of debt that’s been placed on our heads over the last number of years, and we’re really not taking it anymore.”

U.S. Senate democrats aren’t happy about the new tariffs.

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine told reporters reciprocal tariffs and renewed duties on USMCA-covered goods would boomerang as Canada hits back.

“They’ll tax groceries and food products. They’ll tax building supplies at a time when home prices are too high, already. They will tax fertilizer for our farmers. About 80 percent of the potash that is used for fertilizer by our farmers comes from Canada.”

Minnesota Senator Klobuchar argues tariffs should be sparing and targeted, not across the board as with Canada.

“As Ranking Member on the Agriculture Committee, I see what this will do to us, how it adds to the cost of planting—an acre of corn, an acre of soybeans…because, as Tim mentioned, the fertilizer issues, all of the trade and supply chains we have, back and forth.”

U.S. producers exported close to $30 billion in raw and processed farm goods to Canada in 2023.

South Dakota Senator and Senate Republican Party Leader John Thune defends Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs.

“The president declared the emergency to deal with the issue of fentanyl and the flow of fentanyl into this country, not only from our southern border but also from our northern border. That’s what the emergency declaration is about. And, what this would do is undo that.”

Some farm groups, Democrats and economists warn of consumer inflation, higher ag input costs and lost markets, while Trump hopes to level trade, bring factories and jobs to the U.S., and generate (T) trillions in tariff revenue.