Farmers Vs. Trump’s Tariffs, Fund Freeze, Deportations

By Tim Wheeler

Image: Tim Mossholder/Unsplash

SEQUIM–Rural voters were a big factor in Donald Trump’s second-term election last Nov. 5 (Clallam County County Auditor). Yet, even in rural Republican districts, farmers are expressing anger, fears, and frustration about Trump’s tariffs on farm produce, his deportation of migrant farm workers, and his freeze on Agriculture Department funding that benefits family farmers.

Capital Press, a Salem, Oregon-based newspaper dedicated to farmers, loggers, and other rural communities, carried a banner headline in its Jan. 31 edition proclaiming, “Everyone’s Nervous” with a subhead, “Despite optimism about Trump, some policies trouble Farm Bureau.”

The article quotes American Farm Bureau (AFB) President, Zippy Duvall in his speech to the AFB convention in San Antonio Jan. 26: “Everyone’s nervous….we don’t know what steps the full deportation plan has in it.”

Duvall said mass deportation of farm workers, labor shortages, and a trade war that could destroy farm exports “is on farmers’ minds everywhere I go.” This from AFB, a reliably Republican outfit with many farmer members now expressing buyer’s remorse.

That includes right here in Washington State, where export of grain, fruit, and lumber are key industries. Also on the front page of Capital Press is an article headlined, “Trump’s Broad Deportation Order Fuels Fear, Speculation.” The article warns “that what is now official policy will rope in tens of thousands of farmworkers.”

Erik Nicholson, of Kennewick, Washington, a former national Vice President of the United Farmworkers, told the Capital Press that it isn’t only actual deportation, but mass fear, that makes farmworkers “reluctant to go to work,” fearing arrest by Border Patrol and ICE agents. “If this were May or June, we would be having a catastrophe in the fields…”

That fear of deportation is a factor here in Clallam County. I live on our family’s 55-acre farm, a dairy farm when I was a kid. According to the Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy database, our farm is one of 455 farms in Clallam County employing 1,190 farmers and farmworkers. Those farms earned $17.8 million in farm produce last year  (Environmental Working Group [EWG], Farm Subsidy Database). 

We lease the farm to an organic vegetable grower, charging him only enough per acre to cover taxes and insurance. He grows carrots, beets, broccoli, lettuce, and other leafy vegetables on our farm.

During Trump’s first term, a similar war against immigrants was unleashed with Border Patrol vehicles cruising on Ward Road beside our farm. The crews of Latino farmworkers who tilled and harvested our crops disappeared overnight. I watched as the vegetable grower was left to tend the acres by himself, an impossible task. 

That policy raises a grave danger that millions of dollars worth of fruit, grain, and other food commodities will be left to rot on the ground. It means a collapse of our food delivery system, resulting in vastly higher prices for food in our supermarkets.

Rob Larew, President of the National Farmers Union assailed Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on food imports from Canada, Mexico, China and many other nations, warning that these nations will “trigger significant retaliation” on all U.S. exports to their markets. Farmers “are always the first to bear the brunt of unilateral trade actions,” he said, adding, “Our members have already suffered heavy losses from past trade disputes, especially with China, and have lost valuable market access.” (National Farmers Union press release headlined “National Farmers Union Urges President to Consider Tariffs Impact on Farmers”)

Larew also blasted Trump’s freeze on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that benefit family farmers. An example is Michael Protas, owner of One Acre Farm in Western Maryland. Protas signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America program to install solar panels on his farm at a cost of $200,000. The deal called for him to pay half and the Federal Government to pay half. He paid his half and the solar panels were installed. But Trump has frozen paying the $100,000 USDA share. Portas said the Federal Government is defaulting on money they owe. Larew charged that the USDA spending freeze is presenting family farmers “with a lot of uncertainty about whether or not it will actually come through” and is “adding to that economic pressure in the countryside.” (Baltimore Banner, Feb. 25, 2025)

It all adds up to worsening food insecurity. MAGA Republicans have been blocking legislation that will renew the U.S. Farm Bill. They are determined to inflict ruinous cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The Republican budget resolution requires the USDA to find $230 million in cuts. Even though the GOP has promised no cuts in SNAP food benefits, Republican lawmakers told POLITICO that “current food aid benefits are caught in the crosshairs.” (Politico, Feb. 10, “GOP Plots Snips to SNAP”)

SNAP, Food Stamps, the Surplus Food Benefits program – all these nutrition programs enacted over the past half century, are strongly supported by farmers and farmer organizations as a way to address the crisis of hunger in America while also providing urgently needed subsidies to U.S. farmers. (National Farmers Union, “Fairness for Farmers”)

Liquidation or cutbacks of these benefits by Trump, Elon Musk, and other well-fed billionaires means a worsening of hunger and malnutrition in the U.S., the richest nation in the world.