Tariffs and Minnesota’s farms: A delicate situation

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Minnesota Farmers Union president Gary Wertish got my attention when he told me that President Donald Trump’s tariff policy could push Minnesota into a new farm crisis, one that could do more damage than the 1980s version.

I remember that farm crisis — and if you were of sentient age in Minnesota in the 1980s, you do too. The pain of lost farms, dashed dreams and depleted communities caused by a crash in commodity and land prices was felt well beyond farm country — and would be again.

To be sure, the share of Minnesotans actively engaged in farming is smaller now. It fell below 2% in the latest estimates. Yet this is still a state in which plenty of people have farm branches on their family trees — and where 15% of state economic activity is attributable to agriculture.

I expected Wertish to be sour on Trump and tariffs. He’s a fourth-generation corn and soybean grower who farms with generation five near Renville, Minn. Since 2017, he’s headed the Minnesota Farmers Union, the DFL-leaning farmers’ collective that functions as a counterpoint to (and sometimes an ally of) the Republican-leaning Minnesota Farm Bureau. Complaining about Republican policies is almost part of his job description.

But when I met Wertish recently at Farmers Kitchen + Bar, the Farmers Union’s terrific farm-to-table restaurant in Minneapolis, I was struck by the depth of his worry.

I’d asked Wertish to tell me about the 10 grassroots listening sessions the Farmers Union had conducted around the state — a fast-paced series between March 18 and April 8 that stopped in Jackson, Sleepy Eye, Oronoco, Willmar, Ogilvie, McGregor, Hallock, Waconia, St. Charles and Moorhead.

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout came right in the middle of the tour. Wertish wouldn’t claim that was the reason for the strong turnout he’d seen. Then again, jolts like that have a way of drawing people together.

“It wasn’t just farmers,” he said. “We had lots of retired people, health care people, people who volunteer at food banks. There was a lot of talk about the need people are seeing — seeing people they know in line at the food banks.”

Wertish said he heard a lot about cuts in the federal funds food shelves used to purchase locally grown food. But complaints about Trump’s spending cuts went beyond that. People decried reduced staffing at the Department of Veterans Affairs and Social Security offices and the near-complete teardown of USAID, which had contracts with American farm producers.

As new tariffs were unveiled, “there were a lot of comments about uncertainty and chaos,” he said — particularly from soybean growers.

There’s no need to explain to farmers that tariffs at that level are market-killers. They’ve already seen how significantly smaller tariffs in 2018 caused the Chinese to shift away from the U.S. and toward Brazil to purchase soybeans.

But 2018 also brought a cash cushion for farmers adversely affected by the China tariff hike. That year and the next, the feds ultimately sent American farmers checks that totaled $28 billion.

A similar bailout could be in the offing this year. But experts say it would need to be much larger than the 2018 version to ease the pain the 2025 tariffs are likely to inflict on America’s ag sector.

Trump’s willingness to shield farmers in 2018 — albeit temporarily — helps explain his electoral success in 2024. A study of 444 of the nation’s most farming-dependent counties showed that Trump carried all but 11 of them.

But there’s more to Trump’s appeal in farm country than Trump’s 2018 bailout, Wertish said. He cited nearly 40 years of a steady diet of conservative talk radio, “a lot of soundbites about guns, God and gays,” and a credible claim that Democrats are focused on metro matters.

“I think it’s starting to crack. With the tariffs, people are feeling uneasy,” he said. “The longer this chaos goes on, the more the cuts sink in, all of that will take a toll.” When that happens, he added, Democrats ought to be ready with candidates and a message about prosperity and democracy that’s crafted for rural America.

He believes that can happen. But he’s deeply worried that in the near term, Minnesota’s farmers and the communities they’ve helped build might be headed for some seriously hard times.