Wisconsin landscape | Photo by Greg Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are becoming a major drain on Wisconsin’s agricultural economy. China stopped purchasing U.S. soybeans amid a new trade war this spring, triggering a price collapse and leaving farmers wondering what to do with the bumper crop they are now harvesting. Cranberry growers say they’re facing low prices and market uncertainty, too, as other countries turn away their products because of tariffs. 

Small wonder the latest ag economy barometer published by Purdue University on Oct. 7 found that nationwide farmers say their economic condition is weakening. Despite expected record-high corn and soybean yields, farmers report they expect weaker financial performance in 2025 than in 2024 and have a weaker capital investment outlook.

Yet even as optimism about the farm economy is fading, support for Trump among farmers remains strong.

Back in March, 70% of farmers who answered the Purdue survey said they believed tariffs would strengthen the agricultural economy in the long run. That number dropped steeply to 51% by September. Still a large majority — 71% – continue to believe the country as a whole is moving in the right direction, and 80% believe the Trump administration is likely or very likely to give them an aid package to compensate for the damage done by tariffs and trade wars.  

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisconsin) reinforced this hope on the WRDN radio podcast from the World Dairy Expo in Madison last week. Tiffany, who is running for governor, was asked what he says to farmers who are “fed up” with Trump’s tariffs. He replied that Trump tariffs are not going away, but, he said of the administration, “they’re gonna use some of that tariff revenue, which is significant, to help farmers out. Because they know, I mean, President Trump has no better friends than the farmers of America.” 

Trump has suggested he will unveil another farm bailout as he did during his first administration, when China responded to steep tariffs by scaling back purchases of U.S. agricultural products. 

The problem with the bailout solution, says Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former senior adviser for rural development at USDA, is that the revenue generated by tariffs that Trump proposes to convert into handouts to farmers comes directly from the farmers themselves.  

“It’s not even like robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s like robbing Peter to pay Peter,” Ajilore said in a phone interview Wednesday. “What’s happening is that there are tariffs on a lot of goods — looking at steel, aluminum, looking at fertilizers. So farmers are paying more for their inputs. We’re seeing this impacting these companies like Caterpillar, John Deere. And so you can say there’s a lot of revenue, but it’s coming out of the pockets of consumers, businesses and farmers.” 

If farmers are not already feeling seasick as the Trump administration spins the ag economy around on a cycle of tariffs and bailouts, the administration’s immigration crackdown is also making them queasy. 

A panel discussion at last week’s World Dairy Expo focused on a labor shortage made worse by a Trump administration that seems hell-bent on deporting the agricultural workforce.

The recent ICE action that scooped up 24 dairy workers in Manitowoc, most of whom had no criminal records, and deportations of entire crews of legally present H2A workers in Texas had farmers who attended the discussion worried.

“Taking hard-working employees off farms does not make communities safer,” said Brain Rexing, a dairy farmer from Indiana. He described the Hispanic workers on his farm as “way more than employees. — they work together with me and my family side to side.”

Like other farmers, he said, he goes to bed at night worrying about his workers and wakes up in the morning worrying about them. Instead of threatening farmworkers with deportation, Rexing and other farmers at the Expo said, Congress should finally get around to creating a year-round visa that recognizes their essential contributions to the U.S. economy. 

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin) spoke to the group and assured them that the Trump administration has their back. He had personally spoken with Elon Musk he said. “I was like, hey, Elon, there’s two groups of people in the United States that we need to really watch out for. One of them are service members and veterans, because they gave us our freedom and keep us free. And the second one are our farmers, because they feed us. .. So he really zoned in on that and grasped it,” Van Orden said. 

Another “incredibly, incredibly strong proponent of the dairy industry,” he added, “is Tom Homan.”  Homan is Trump’s border czar and the architect of the family separation policy during the first Trump administration. “He was raised on a dairy farm,” Van Orden said. “So keep that in mind. There are some people in D.C. that understand what’s going on. We’re trying our best to help you. So I would just ask that you stay in the business and that God will bless you.”

It was not the most reassuring speech. But Van Orden also asked the dairy farmers in the room to support his proposal for a new system to make their workforce legal, which would impose a fine on employers and dairy workers and then require the workers to self-deport before returning to the country under a new federal program that would allow them to do their jobs legally. He introduced the bill in July and it was referred to the House Agriculture Committee, of which he is a member. 

The farmers, understandably, had a lot of questions.

What was their workers’ incentive to participate? How long would it take the government to process their paperwork, remove them from the country and let them back in again? How do they know they won’t be deported as soon as they come back? 

These are reasonable fears, given the terrifying scenes of ICE grabbing people off the street, busting down doors and zip-tying parents and children, sweeping up people with and without legal authorization to be in the country, whether or not they have committed any crime.

Recently, even the Trump administration’s Labor Department declared that the nation’s food system faces an emergency due to the administration’s aggressive mass deportation program, warning in a federal filing uncovered by the American Prospect that the immigration crackdown on agricultural workers has created a significant “risk of supply shock-induced food shortages.” 

“The Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens,” the filing states, contradicting Trump administration rhetoric about immigrants stealing American jobs.

The solution proposed by Trump’s labor department is to pay H2A seasonal agricultural workers even less — offsetting the cost to employers of a terrified workforce that is disinclined to show up to work after ICE raids.

It seems like a weird solution, as David Dayen of the American Prospect observed, “since cutting wages across the sector will likely drive existing workers to look elsewhere for jobs.”

But there is a dark logic behind the move to slash wages for agricultural workers in the midst of the moral panic over immigration. Dayen quotes Antonio De Loera-Brust of the United Farm Workers, who sees a government threatening mass deportations working hand in glove with employers who benefit from a powerless immigrant workforce. 

“We call it the ‘Deport and Replace’ strategy,” De Loera-Brust said, “which is defined above all to make it easier for corporate agribusiness to exploit its workers, whether terrified undocumented residents or an unlimited pool of cheap foreign guest workers … The Trump administration would rather expand the abusive H-2A program than do right by the workers who are already here, feeding America for decades.”

This situation does not directly apply to Wisconsin dairy farms, since dairy workers are not eligible for H2A visas. But it was not at all clear from Van Orden’s remarks at the World Dairy Expo that he understands that fact. 

“The H2A program is broken and it sucks. There you go. That’s the whole press conference,” he said after he was introduced. Later, he referred to “all this garbage you’ve been dealing with, these H2As and H2Bs” insisting his own proposal for a new visa system would work better. In fact, dairy farmers are not dealing with the H2A (seasonal) or H2B (non-agricultural) visa systems at all.

Van Orden did acknowledge the difficult situation for the dairy industry, which depends on a labor force 60% to 90% of which is made up of immigrants who lack any sort of legal authorization to be in the country, since there is no such thing as a year-round visa for low-skilled work.

“Rocks are heavy. Trees are made of wood. Gravity is real. If we deport every single person that is working in the agriculture industry, the hospitality industry and the construction industry, all of those industries will shutter in a moment’s notice,” Van Orden declared.

But it’s unclear if his plan, the Agricultural Workforce Reform Act of 2025, will help.

One farmer asked if his workers would be barred from returning to the U.S. if they committed a traffic violation (a common concern in Wisconsin, where immigrants without legal papers cannot get a driver’s license). Van Orden fobbed him off, saying that would be a question for the executive branch to resolve through its rule-making process.

Several farmers listening to Van Orden affirmed that they supported Trump’s goal of securing the border, but added that they thought that mission had been accomplished. Now they hoped the administration would turn its attention to a new public safety issue — the threat mass deportations pose to the U.S. food supply.  

Farmers across the country seem inclined to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt. But the doubt is growing. 

“Farmers are getting it in so many ways; their exports are down, their costs are up, and they’re losing their workforce,” said Ajilore, the former USDA economist. Given all that, farmer sentiment “actually hasn’t really moved as much as you would expect, given what’s happening,” he said. He attributes it to a wait-and-see attitude among farmers who have faithfully supported Trump for years. But now, he added, “the impact is starting to really hit home.”

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Mexico is weighing a steep new tariff that could reshape its car market for years to come, proposing a 50 percent duty on vehicles imported from nations without free trade agreements. Importantly, that list includes China, meaning the move could weigh heavily on fast-growing player BYD and even affect Tesla at a time when electric car sales in Mexico are beginning to gain momentum.

Read: Mexico Has Had Enough With Chinese Car Imports

The tariff proposal, made public last week, wouldn’t stop at EVs. It would also hit combustion-powered cars from countries with no trade deals, a group that includes South Korea and China, both global automotive heavyweights, as well as India, Indonesia, and Russia, which play a smaller or more regionally focused role in the industry. Interestingly, American brands would be spared.

Automakers on Edge

Analysts suggest the new levy could put the brakes on BYD’s rapid rise in Mexico. Eugenio Grandio, president of the Electric Mobility Association in the country, put it plainly: “It’s definitely a game-changer. Fifty percent is a very aggressive number.”

Reuters reports that the tariff plan still requires approval from Mexico’s Congress before it can be enacted. General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis would sidestep the new duties thanks to their production plants in Mexico, which let them bring in a share of vehicles without tariffs. On the other hand, while BYD and Tesla have both discussed adding factories to their Mexican portfolios, so far those projects have failed to progress.

Tesla Has Solutions

Tesla’s pipeline to Mexico has so far depended entirely on its Shanghai facility, which has produced every Model 3 and Model Y sold there since mid-2023, Salvador Rosas of the Tesla Owners Club in Mexico, told Reuters. Still, analysts suggest the company has a buffer, with local stockpiles that could give it room to shift supply from other plants, including those in the United States.

BYD’s Mexican Plans Shunted

Back in 2023, BYD said it would build a new car factory in Mexico. However, these plans were ditched earlier this year after pressure from Mexican authorities who were worried approving such a plant could be detrimental to trade relations with the United States and would potentially upset President Donald Trump.

Despite the setback, BYD has enjoyed a meteoric rise in Mexico in recent years. Last year, it sold approximately 40,000 vehicles in the country, accounting for nearly half of all EV and plug-in hybrid sales nationwide. That momentum has continued into this year, with sales on track to double once again.

Chinese cars are making huge gains in Asia, Europe and South America, but brutal 100 percent tariffs have so far kept them locked out of North America. There’s a chance, though, that this won’t last much longer as Canadian lawmakers are considering scrapping the steep tariffs – and the country’s drivers think they should.

In a recent pole conducted by Canada’s CTV News, almost two thirds of respondents said they either supported or somewhat supported removing the 100 percent duty on Chinese-made EVs. A total 29 percent supported the removal of tariffs and 33 percent somewhat supported the move. Nine percent of those asked weren’t sure, while 27 percent either opposed or somewhat opposed ditching the duty altogether.

Related: Canada Freezes EV Mandate And GM Boss Can’t Stop Smiling

Canada’s government imposed the tariffs 11 months ago claiming the measure would shield local automakers from unfair Chinese competition. An EU study that led to similar, but less harsh, tariffs in the Old Continent found Chinese automakers received various forms of financial help from their country’s government.

Sliding EV Sales

Now, however, Canadian lawmakers have admitted that the tariffs are up for review. One of the reasons is that EV sales have cratered in the country, with figures released this week showing registrations of fully electric cars north of the US border are down a massive 39.2 percent, in part due to the lower availability of incentives.

Canada recently scrapped its mandate that 20 percent of all new vehicles be zero emissions by 2026 having realized the target was unworkable. Giving drivers access to more EVs, and ones with attractively low prices at that, could potentially boost electric car takeup – or so the thinking goes.

CTV Survey: Do You Support Removing 100 Percent Tariff on Chinese EVs?

Source: CTV News

Pressure From the Fields

There’s another force pushing for the removal of tariffs, though, and it’s nothing to do with cars or meeting lower emissions targets: it’s farmers. The agricultural industry hopes that by Canada agreeing to scrap 100 percent tariffs on EVs, or at least lower the rate, might make China willing to remove its own 75.8 percent tariffs on Canadian crops such as Canola.

Canada’s PM Mark Carney last week pledged $370 million CAD ($267m US) in support for the Canola market to help it weather the tariffs. The Canola industry supports 206,000 Canadian jobs and contributes $43.7 billion CAD ($31.6 bn US) to the country’s economy, according to Canola Digest, so the local government obviously pays great attention to it.

President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during an event announcing broad global tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 2, 2025.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in early November on whether President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs are legal, according to an order the court released Tuesday.

The one-page unsigned order laid out an expedited timeline, which the administration had requested, for the consolidated legal challenges brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general.

A U.S. appeals court sided with the businesses and state officials late last month. In its 7-4 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling in May finding Trump’s unprecedented use of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to trigger global tariffs violated the Constitution.

The justices’ acceptance of the case is the latest in a string of legal challenges against the administration that have escalated to the high court since Trump took office in January. Recently the Supreme Court has handed the administration wins on immigration enforcement and withholding foreign aid.

Trump began imposing wide-reaching tariffs in February and significantly broadened them in the following months on goods from around the globe after declaring national emergencies — first over illegal fentanyl smuggling, and then declaring trade deficits an emergency. A trade deficit means the U.S. imports more goods from a country than that nation’s businesses purchase from U.S. suppliers.

As of July, the U.S. had collected roughly $122 billion in tariff revenue, according to a monthly tracker produced by the Peterson Institute on International Economics. 

Tariffs are taxes that the U.S. government collects from domestic businesses and purchasers when they import foreign goods.

In the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court to fast-track the case, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued the government would face “catastrophic” economic fallout if it had to repay businesses for the tariffs already collected, particularly if the court waited until next year to take the case.

Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among states that challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs. 

The business plaintiffs include V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company, and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.

Automakers aren’t the only ones walking back their electric vehicle plans as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has decided to give companies additional “flexibility.” As such, he’s waiving 2026 model year vehicles from the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard and will conduct a broader review to “provide additional flexibilities and reduce costs.”

As the prime minister’s office explained, the government wants to make “targeted regulatory adjustments” to ensure automotive companies remain competitive during the transition to electric vehicles. They added the “automotive sector is essential to Canada’s economy, supporting jobs, trade, innovation and the green transition.”

More: Canada Requires All New Cars Sold By 2035 To Be Electrified

The Electric Vehicle Availability Standard originally required at least 20% of new light-duty vehicle sales be zero emission by 2026. However, the rules will be amended to remove that target to reduce “economic pressure due to tariffs.”

On top of that, the government is reviewing other EVAS deadlines to ensure they “reflect market realities” and don’t place an “undue burden on automakers.” As you may recall, 60% of sales are supposed to be zero emission vehicles by 2030, while that number would rise to 100% by 2035.

Despite hitting the brakes on Canada’s electric vehicle push, Carney’s office said zero emission vehicles are “crucial for addressing climate change,” improving health, and creating significant opportunities for the economy. However, the government noted the transition to EVs is “unfolding amid significant short-term economic uncertainty” and “Canada must carefully consider how recent U.S. policy uncertainty could affect the affordability and availability of ZEVs in the integrated North American market.”

Interestingly, the government said they’ll “explore options to bring more affordable electric vehicles to Canadians.” They didn’t go into specifics, but it will be interesting to see if they’ll crack the door open to Chinese brands.

The changes to the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard were revealed as part of a larger announcement that aims to “protect, build, and transform Canadian strategic industries.” Part of this includes a new Buy Canadian Policy for the federal government as well as a Regional Tariff Response Initiative, which aims to help small and medium-sized businesses impacted by U.S. tariffs.