Agriculture as Collateral Damage in Trump's Trade War
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Ben Lilliston on tariffs, trade, farm policy, and the chaos of the Trump Administration.
“The fear is that agriculture isn’t something Trump is paying attention to, and the collateral damage gets lost within his larger grievances with other countries.”
That’s Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). IATP is one of The Cocklebur’s go-to sources for information, data, and analysis on all things agriculture, trade, climate, conservation, and more. IATP has a long and distinguished history as a critic of corporate-managed free trade, as well as working for positive alternatives like fair prices for farmers, policies that address corporate control over agriculture markets, developing local food systems, implementing fair trade and food sovereignty, and making the case for conservation-based farming practices.
The Cocklebur interviewed Lilliston by email to provide context for President Donald Trump’s tariff and trade policies as they related to agriculture and rural America. The interview is presented below.
Read IATP’s primer on tariffs by Karen Hansen-Kuhn—Trade Basics: Tariffs 101.
The Cocklebur: Thanks for taking the time, Ben. I have always been a big fan of IATP. You get the nuance of the complexity of trade as it relates to agriculture, rural communities. and the environment. We agree that trade wars are painful and terrible, but also that corporate-managed “free trade” regimes have been painful and terrible. What do you make of Trump’s new round of tariffs? How will they impact rural America?
Ben Lilliston: These tariffs absolutely will impact rural America, and they likely already have by undermining U.S. credibility as a trading partner. The Trump administration has targeted these initial tariffs on countries that receive the most U.S. ag exports - Mexico, Canada and China. He could expand that list to include Europe, Japan and South Korea. When those countries respond to Trump’s actions, they target vulnerable industries that depend on exports. For agriculture, the most common targets are the bigger commodities like soybeans, pork, beef, or dairy. If ag exports shrink significantly, that’s a big problem.
Much of our Farm Bill relies on exports to work. The Farm Bill sets up all kinds of incentives, from revenue and crop insurance programs to USDA backed loans, for farmers to produce for global markets. If those markets are diminished or lost, we’ll see prices {prices paid to farmers for the crops and livestock they grow} drop and income losses for farmers.
Tariffs are a blunt tool, but they are not a trade or economic strategy. The on-again, off-again approach by the Trump Administration makes it impossible for farmers to plan. On top of that, costs like fertilizer and equipment are likely to rise tied to a tariff fight. The last piece is that USDA is cutting resources for farmers producing for local markets, whether it is Farm to School programs, selling to local food shelves, or strengthening our local processing capacity.
If you are taking away export markets, increasing costs and gutting local food system efforts, it’s hard to see how farmers and rural communities don’t pay a price. The fear is that agriculture isn’t something Trump is paying attention to, and the collateral damage gets lost within his larger grievances with other countries.
The Cocklebur: We certainly agree that the way the Trump Administration is going about it is a disaster. Do you think that there will possibly be anything good about the next four years when it comes to the Trump trade regime?
Lilliston: These tariff fights expose how vulnerable our agriculture economy is to lost exports. We’ve seen trade and farm policy largely on autopilot for several decades despite clear signs they are not working well. It’s been a race-to-the bottom on prices for farmers, the loss of rural manufacturing, and a handful of powerful agribusiness firms controlling the market. We’ve yet to get serious about climate change in farm policy, and the Trump Administration has stripped away any mention of climate – yet the damaging weather events, heat, drought, and floods keep coming.
The chaos the Trump Administration is creating through these tariff fights should spur new thinking about how trade policy could support a more resilient food and agriculture economy, one that focuses on people, community and the planet - not just multinational agribusiness firms. The Biden Administration’s trade policy made some important reforms to protect labor rights, but for agriculture they continued an agribusiness-first approach by going after farm policies in Mexico and Canada. It’s important that we don’t only push for an end to Trump’s tariff chaos and pretend business-as-usual was working just fine. We need aligned reforms in the Farm Bill, government food purchasing, food system worker protections, and rural development. Trade policy, and tariffs, could support those reforms rather than work against them.
The Cocklebur: Since this is the world we’re living in, let’s get out the crystal ball and see what we think is coming down the line. Do you think Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins are gonna get out the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) playbook and start dump money into the factory farm system once again? And if so, who will benefit from that?
Lilliston: Rollins mentioned in her confirmation hearing that she would set up the Market Facilitation Program once again and that she was bringing on some of the same staff who ran that program. It resulted in record high subsidy payouts, mostly going to commodity crop farmers, with some to pork and dairy producers. There were at least three GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports on mismanagement of that program. GAO found that previous Trump trade aid mostly benefited farmers in the South, that it paid farmers different prices in different parts of the country for the same crop, that it rewarded most crops well above estimated trade damage, that it short-changed fruit and vegetable producers and socially disadvantaged farmers. It also included a government purchasing component, where multinational corporations like JBS were paid millions. It was seen by many as an election giveaway. It seems like they are prepping to set up that program again, though with Congress unable to move a Farm Bill or agree on a budget, there isn’t as much CCC money to send as payouts right now. We’ll have to see how that plays out, and whether they approach the program differently this time.
The Cocklebur: Let’s talk about the alternative. If corporate-managed NAFTA-like free trade is bad, and Trump’s trade war is the wrong way to go, what would a pro-rural, pro-worker, pro-environment, pro-working class and poor people trade policy look like?
Lilliston: Currently, our free trade rules do a great job at protecting the rights of multinational corporations, whether through lower tariff requirements or intellectual property rights or limits on food programs. A different approach would abandon this idea that we must expand trade for trade’s sake, but rather recognize how trade fits within larger economic and social well-being goals. It would empower the U.S. and trading partners to manage imports and exports to support fair markets for farmers and workers, worker and human rights, and recognize environmental protections and community benefits. Trade deals can support countries working together to lift-up standards such as living wages, worker rights and climate action. There are opportunities for reform, but chaotic tariff fights are a damaging distraction away from what’s needed.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.
Excellent article!
Thank you for today’s update! Just found you on Substack.