Feeding the World
This past Monday, I was recording our monthly conversation with U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley just as President Trump posted to Truth Social, telling America’s farmers to get ready to produce more product to sell domestically, because of his planned tariffs on external sales in April. There was not much detail in that post, and we’ve heard nothing else since. Sen. Grassley suggested that it was not Constitutional to put tariffs on outgoing products, as the post implied…but again, we don’t know much more.
The basic concept of “let’s take care of home first” makes perfect sense, and for too long, those in government on both sides of the political spectrum have taken their collective eyes off the ball when it comes to that.
But here’s the problem with the President’s post…it ignores the fact that America’s farmers already produce far more than we can consume in this country. In other words, if we don’t have exports to other countries, vast amounts of commodities will sit and rot because we produce more than we need. But that works out because you don’t see banana trees or coffee plantations along Iowa roadways. We sell corn and beans to other countries, they sell us coffee and bananas. That’s part of free trade.
Yes, it has to be fair trade, and I’m not sure the U.S. has been treated fairly all the time. But hopefully someone in the Administration has pointed out to the White House that when we sell pork to China, people in the U.S. aren’t going hungry or going without ham or bacon. And hopefully that will have an impact before a different set of tariffs go into effect.
As we’ve talked about here on the radio, some of the tariff threats have led to behavior change already; a Honda plant expanding in this country as opposed to Mexico the latest example this week. But as we’ve also noted, those who produce perishable commodities are the first to be harmed by a trade war—farmers can’t hold out as long as steelmakers, for example. And there’s a reason we say with pride that America’s farmers literally feed the world.
Here’s hoping those making policy, at all levels, have an accurate fundamental understanding of how this all works.
