Until recently, the US agricultural sector, unlike the economy at large, has historically run a trade surplus―exporting more than is imported.
The Trump administration’s trade wars, which were supposed to protect US economic interests, led to retaliatory tariffs from major trading partners, including China, that drove down prices received by US farmers, especially for soybean and hog operations.
A 10 percent economy-wide tariff, as Donald Trump is proposing in his 2024 presidential campaign, would cost the US economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs, including in the food-processing sector. Retaliatory tariffs and other import restrictions would hit US farmers even harder.