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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Marchers organized by Voces de la Frontera demanded immigration reform from the federal government. (Photo | Joe Brusky)

A family friend who lives in Mexico flew into Chicago last week to visit his college-aged son. We exchanged messages about getting together. Could the two of them come up to Madison, I asked. “The truth is with everything that’s been happening in Chicago, and the arbitrary arrests, we almost haven’t gone out at all these last three days,” my friend wrote back. “This stuff with ICE, it’s unbelievable,” he added. “But there it is. It’s happening.” 

Sadly, he felt safer staying in his son’s apartment and then dashing to the airport Saturday to fly back to Mexico than driving across the border to visit us in Wisconsin.

The same day we exchanged messages, an ICE raid on the northeast side of Madison, not far from my home, swept up seven people. Madison police didn’t even know about the ICE raid until it was over, according to chief John Patterson.

So far, Wisconsin has not been targeted for the massive escalation in immigration raids taking place in neighboring states. But the Thursday morning arrests in Madison and a Sept. 25 sweep of dairy farm workers in Manitowoc mark a sudden shift.

Darryl Morin of the nonprofit Forward Latino addressed the Madison and Manitowoc raids at a Friday press conference in Milwaukee. “While other states such as California and Illinois have borne the brunt of these new immigration enforcement actions,” he said, “I fear we are turning the page and entering a new chapter, a new sad chapter, in immigration enforcement right here in our great state.”

“What we’re seeing in Chicago is now starting to hit closer to home,” agreed Jennifer Maldonado, an immigrants’ rights advocate in Manitowoc, who joined the press conference by video link. She described fielding calls from terrified family members after the crackdown in her area. “Many are people asking, ‘Should I send my children to school? Should I go to work?’” she said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims it disrupted an international sex and drug trafficking ring when it grabbed the 24 Manitowoc farm workers at a Walmart parking lot and in a door-to-door operation targeting workers’ homes. 

But this is the same Department of Homeland Security that insisted a Mexican-born Milwaukee resident wrote a letter threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump — even after the person who actually wrote the letter, Demetric Scott, admitted that he was the real author and that he was trying to frame the other man to keep him from testifying against Scott at trial. Long after that confession a statement from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem celebrating the detention of “this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump” remained on the DHS website, uncorrected, connecting the wrong person to an image of the letter written by Scott. 

Dubious hype about immigrant workers, portraying them as dangerous, violent criminals, is the now-familiar backdrop to a crackdown that does not, in fact, have anything to do with fighting crime. Fewer than half of the people ICE has arrested under Trump are convicted criminals. Of those, only 7% have been convicted of violent crimes and only 5% of drug-related crimes, Tim Henderson of Stateline reports.

In Manitowoc, “This [criminal network] narrative was pushed without any basis to try to paint a negative image of an entire community,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz of Voces de la Frontera said during the Friday press conference. Of the 24 people arrested, ICE identified one person who faced serious criminal charges. But, as Henry Redman reported, that person was not among those rounded up and was already sitting in custody during the Sept. 25 raid. 

Neumann-Ortiz described seeing disturbing videos documenting ICE actions — agents barging into a home “as if this were some kind of cartel, when it’s a working class family” and of a father who was grabbed by ICE while taking out the garbage. “It’s disturbing. It’s very, very disturbing,” she said. 

One bright spot, she said, has been the community response to “the tragedy that we’re witnessing around the U.S. and here in Wisconsin as well.” She praised Wisconsinites’ sense of “urgency to build community — to support each other.” 

Voces and other groups have been training community members across the state, with Know Your Rights seminars and instruction on how to effectively document ICE activity without escalating a dangerous situation. They’ve been lobbying local communities to reject 287(g) ICE cooperation agreements along with the cash incentives the federal government is offering local law enforcement in exchange for rounding up immigrants — a system Neumann Ortiz described as allowing local police to “essentially function like bounty hunters.” And they’ve been trying to help immigrants prepare for the worst, connecting them with immigration attorneys and helping them make contingency plans by naming caretakers for their property and guardians for their children in case they are deported. Forward Latino is sharing helpful information in a “family separation toolkit.”

Advocates, Neumann-Ortiz said, are getting good at “combatting lies,” connecting immigrants with legal support, and moving fast.

Several Manitowoc workers have already been deported, she said, and another was moved to detention outside of Wisconsin, where it’s hard for his family members and his lawyers to be in touch with him. 

Morin said he was on the phone with a Wisconsin resident who had been detained by ICE and he could hear an agent yelling in the background that the man had to sign a self-deportation order. Morin was also yelling, telling the man not to sign, and that they had to let him see a lawyer. “That’s happening on a daily basis,” Morin said. “The violation of constitutional rights is happening right now on a daily basis.” 

Against a gale of misinformation, immigrants’ advocates are fighting to get out the truth. 

“You can fight your deportation. But people need to know that and not be tricked or conned into signing deportation orders,” Neumann Ortiz said.

“It’s not a crime to be undocumented in the US. It’s a civil violation,” Morino added. 

Farmers, alarmed at the prospect of losing the immigrant workers who perform 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms, have been communicating with each other and with immigrants rights groups, Neumann-Ortiz said, trying to help their employees protect themselves. 

“We need to scale it up even more, so that people are not tricked into giving up their rights,” she said. 

The federal immigration crackdown, and the way it has seeped into local communities, does nothing to improve public safety. We are all safer if immigrants are confident enough to call 911 to report crime and abuse “or if their neighbor’s house is on fire,” as Morin put it. 

Despite the dire news, advocates see progress in community engagement and responsiveness. 

“In the early days we were getting flooded with false reports,” Morin said. “People wanted to spread fear.” Now, through training and preparation, advocacy groups have created a reliable channel for information about ICE raids and are able to screen out unsubstantiated rumors.

And some communities that have been tempted to accept federal dollars and cooperate with ICE have begun to think twice.

In Palmyra, where the local police department signed an agreement with ICE, community pushback has slowed down implementation of the agreement. In Walworth County, Neumann-Ortiz said, public pressure helped persuade the sheriff to reject a 287(g) agreement and Ozaukee County rolled back an agreement to accept federal money in exchange for detaining immigrants arrested by ICE.

The massive increase in funding for ICE — and the incentives it offers local law enforcement agencies to pursue immigrants in their communities — is funded through the same “Big Beautiful Bill Act” that slashes health care, food assistance and education funding. “We’re taking away food from hungry kids, medical care, money from schools, to do what?” Neumann-Ortiz said, referring to the push to terrorize immigrants. “That does not promote public safety.”

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