WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has not slowed his pursuit of central policy goals and personal passions, even after major setbacks at the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts.

The high court in its 2026 term delivered blows to Trump’s core campaign promises to upend a constitutional provision governing who becomes a U.S. citizen at birth and to swiftly address the growing national debt with “trillions of dollars” raised by taxing imports. 

The justices also ruled the president cannot fire, without cause, Fed Board Gov. Lisa Cook and deny her a chance to plead her case. And a lower court blocked Trump from installing his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

But even after the Supreme Court ruled against him, Trump is forging ahead and using what some legal observers describe as “creative lawyering” to find alternative routes to push his agenda, even as public support fades.

He ordered new blanket tariffs in late July on at least 60 trading partners. He signed a new round of birthright citizenship orders Aug. 6. Reports also revealed that Cook received a letter Aug. 5 from administration officials that Trump is again “considering” firing her.

The moves test the power dynamic between the executive and judicial branches, but are not illegal or even unconventional in modern times, experts said.

“They look at it and they say, ‘We want to advance a particular policy agenda. Here’s the whole array of legal arguments that we might be able to use that give us authority,’’’ said Scott Anderson, senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution and senior counsel and editor of the publication Lawfare.

Trump is not alone in this pursuit. After all, President Joe Biden found another route to student loan debt relief after a loss at the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court effectively axed the Biden-era relief program in March.

“It does happen, and (administrations) will sometimes run the risk of legal reversal, but it’s a rarer move,” Anderson said. “For this administration, it’s become the standard move.”

‘Spirit of the law’

While Anderson said Trump’s responses to the rulings are “not surprising” given the legal strategy of his second term, one could argue the “legal brinksmanship … often clearly runs contrary to some of the spirit of the law, and it capitalizes on a lot of institutional inefficiencies.” 

Thomas Berry, a legal scholar with the libertarian Cato Institute, said while Trump has often used rhetoric to “delegitimize the court,” his recent actions are not out of legal bounds.

“What he’s doing is distinct from outright disobedience or ignoring a Supreme Court’s decision, and it’s important to stress that that line has not been crossed,” said Berry, who directs the institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

A White House spokesperson said the administration has “always followed court orders.”

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Cook case required notice and an opportunity for a hearing in considering whether the President should take certain adverse employment actions. The President’s notice sent to Fed. Governor Cook offers exactly that within the precise structure enunciated by the Court,” said Lauren Bis in a brief written response from the White House.

A Department of Justice spokesperson, who did not provide a name, wrote in a statement, “Investigative and prosecutorial decisions are made based on the law and the facts. To date, DOJ has prevailed in 24 emergency applications before the Supreme Court, winning over 80 percent, an unprecedented win rate that speaks for itself, and has also won dozens of merits cases at the Court.”

The spokesperson highlighted the department’s Supreme Court win in June that allows the administration to follow through with plans to deport between about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians who were living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status.

Birthright citizenship

On the final day of its 2026 term, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s sweeping attempt to deny citizenship to children born to parents who either do not have legal status or hold temporary legal visas. 

Chief Justice John Roberts led the 6-3 opinion on June 30, writing that children born in the U.S. to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present “are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”

Today’s exceptions for those who are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction include foreign diplomats and their families, members of invading armies and in most cases foreign public ships passing in nearby waters.

On Aug. 6, Trump signed two executive orders again aimed at curtailing birthright citizenship. The first targets children born to the staff working for foreign diplomats; to children born in American Samoa, where Congress has yet to pass a citizenship law; and to the children born to parents who belong to what the U.S. defines as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”  

“So what Trump is trying to do with these executive orders is he’s trying to say, ‘OK fine, those are the categories you’ve given us. We’re going to try to push those to the maximal extent possible,’” Berry said.

“And he interprets them broadly,” Berry continued. “Do people have diplomatic immunity or not? That’s kind of a factual question. Literally the ambassador and the ambassador’s spouse, they get diplomatic immunity. But does everyone from the foreign country working in the embassy similarly get immunity from U.S. law? That wasn’t my impression.”

Trump is also seeking to limit birthright citizenship by taking what Berry described as a “maximalist view” of what an invading army is.

“It’s not obvious that that analogy extends to people who are part of designated terrorist groups because they’re not literally rampaging and pillaging,” he said. “This is more people who are living here but have been, you know, labeled as part of a group that’s at odds with the United States.”  

Anderson said the administration “clearly is intending to just take advantage of every hint and every limitation the Supreme Court decision left open.”

The American Civil Liberties Union on Aug. 12 began the process of asking the federal judiciary to reaffirm the Supreme Court ruling. 

Tariffs

Trump’s trade policy provides another example of the administration finding a new legal reasoning after the Supreme Court struck down the initial basis for a major administration goal.

In the midst of refunding roughly $166 billion to businesses that paid taxes on imports under Trump’s emergency tariffs, the president has hopscotched across multiple trade statutes to continually impose at least 10% duties on most global goods since his Supreme Court loss in February.

In a 6-3 opinion, the high court struck down Trump’s unprecedented claim of tariff authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Congress retained tariff authority in most circumstances, Roberts wrote for the majority, and Trump could not use the statute to impose duties after declaring emergencies on trade imbalances and illegal drug smuggling.

Trump lost the case to a handful of small business owners and Democratic state officials. Tariffs are taxes paid by the importers, meaning American businesses were shouldering the additional costs.

Trump immediately turned to another statute, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes the president to unilaterally set up to 10% in tariffs for 150 days. 

The order set off another round of legal challenges, including from Democratic-led states, in the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Less than a month after the Supreme Court loss, the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative also opened broad trade investigations under Section 301 of the 1974 law into the practices of nearly all U.S. trading partners.

As the clock ran out on Trump’s 10% blanket tariff under Section 122 on July 24, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced his office had found forced labor practices by roughly 60 of America’s trading partners, including Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, among dozens more. The findings triggered a 10% to 12.5% duty on most goods from those countries.

Days earlier, Trump announced he would use a Depression-era provision that had never been enforced — Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — to slap a 50% duty on most Canadian imports. The U.S., for now, has delayed the start of the high tariffs as talks with Canada continue, according to reports.

Trump’s strategy on pushing tariffs is “not really surprising at all,” Anderson said, adding “it’s not even inappropriate.”

“The Supreme Court never said, ‘You can’t do tariffs.’ In fact, it said basically you can. It just said ‘You can’t do it this way.’ And that automatically points to these other ways, which everyone said is probably a more sound way to do this if the president really wants to do this,” Anderson said.

“It doesn’t mean it’s good policy,” he added. “It doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, but there’s at least a very colorable case the president can do this all legally. ”

2025 deportation flights

Trump’s “aggressive” legal strategy has set him apart from other presidents, and, despite specific recent examples that haven’t crossed a legal line, the administration likely violated court orders in relation to immigration, according to observers.

“I think there are some cases that push the envelope, might be unlawful, particularly around, like, some of those early deportations,” Anderson said. “But the majority of the time, the executive branch has been responding and complying with court orders. It’s capitalizing on the fact that those orders are often very narrow.”

Berry also highlighted the March 2025 deportation flights that took off with hundreds of immigrants on board despite a court order as a potential example of cases “where these agencies have outright violated court orders.”

Overall, the courts have been a check on the administration’s view of expansive power, both experts said.

“It is worth taking a moment to realize, like, just how vastly smaller the scope of this (most recent) birthright executive order is after the Supreme Court,” Berry said. “The decision did cut off the vast majority of options the administration has. I mean, you think about the scope of millions of people that the original order would have affected, and compare that to this. It’s just night and day.”

Electorate another check

Voters are also a check on power, observers say.

With crucial midterm elections approaching, Trump’s net approval rating is -26, meaning the percentage of voters who approve of him is 26 points below those who disapprove, according to The Economist/YouGov poll figures published Aug. 18. A Reuters/Ipsos found Trump’s approval rating at a record low of 33%, according to data published Aug. 17.

A recent Fox New poll last month showed most voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy. And 55% told Reuters/Ipsos just days before the Supreme Court ruling that they disapproved of Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.

Trump surrounded himself in his second term with people who “openly denigrated” a lot of norms of the executive office and are “acting accordingly” to what they saw their voter base wanted, Anderson said.

“I think they probably overreacted to this idea that simply by winning the last election, that voters have a high tolerance for this,” Anderson said. “And Republicans in Congress and potentially in 2028 are going to pay a price for that.”

Anderson added if voters and lawmakers don’t like the loopholes Trump’s legal strategy is employing, then maybe it’s time for Congress to close them.

“If we don’t think our laws align with what we think is right ethically and good policy, then maybe they do need to be adjusted,” he said. 

“Maybe if we want a robust separation of powers, we need to take actions that will empower the courts and Congress to push back on executive aggrandizement more effectively, as opposed to the trajectory over the most of the 20th century, which was implicitly, sometimes expressly, more or less empowering the executive branch on the assumption that the executive branch was going to self-constrain itself.” 

‘Everything people don’t like’

As for the Kennedy Center: Despite a judge’s order that led to the yanking of Trump’s name from the facade of the revered performing arts venue in mid-June, Trump’s hand-picked board voted Aug. 13 to again affix his name to the building. 

This time, instead of above John F. Kennedy’s name, the board voted to add an inscription underneath to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” according to court records.

A federal judge had found that Trump’s name, which had already been added, could not officially remain there without authorization from Congress.

“It’s sort of everything people don’t like about lawyers at its extreme. … This is kind of again looking for a loophole —  they’re going to argue ‘We are not naming the center. We are adding this appendage,’” Berry said. 

“So long as it’s just like naming the renovation, you know, kind of like a sponsorship deal at the end of the name of a stadium or something like that, that’s acceptable because it’s not renaming the center,” he continued. “So we’re likely to have litigation about that too, and it’s going to be a pretty lawyerly and probably annoying debate.”

Lotus had big ambitions about selling the all-electric Eletre in the United States. The SUV was supposed to arrive from just $107,000, a figure that reads reasonably against the performance and technology on the table even if six digits is hardly pocket change. An Eletre costing just north of $100,000 never made it to a single American driveway.

Just months after Lotus announced its plans for the SUV in the US, the Biden administration jacked up tariffs on Chinese-built EVs from 25 percent to 100 percent. Lotus was forced to change plans and decided to import a small number of well-equipped models based on the Eletre R, which was initially going to start at $145,000. The new model, known as the Eletre Carbon, cost an eye-watering $232,900.

Read: The First Chinese EVs Reaching Canada Aren’t The Bargains Buyers Were Promised

Speaking with Motor Trend, president and chief executive of Lotus Americas, Massimiliano Trantini, revealed that after the allocation of Eletre Carbon models was sold out for 2025, no other examples have been imported into the country.

What Went Wrong?

“We planned to bring the Eletre into the U.S.,” he told the magazine. “We made all the activity to prepare the car, we got all the homologation. We were ready. When we decided to bring the car, the tariffs started kicking in, so we had to select carefully the car we wanted to bring. There was a moment where, with 100 percent tariff, we could still manage. We decided to take the highest trim—the Eletre Carbon, a fully loaded car—sold then as model-year 25 in a limited edition.”

Trantini added that when the import duty was increased once again, this time to 150 percent, Lotus could no longer find a business case for selling the Eletre in the U.S. market.

While the Eletre is now available internationally as a plug-in hybrid, it’s highly unlikely either it or the Emeya will come to the US, given the Connected Vehicle Rule, which bans new vehicles with Chinese technology. Thankfully, Trantini said that the Emira remains compliant through the 2027 model year. Given that it’s built in the US, rather than China like the Eletre and Emeya, there’s hope it’ll remain on sale for several years to come.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump reignited his tariff agenda Friday by imposing new import taxes on products from dozens of top U.S. trading partners, immediately replacing temporary global tariffs he levied after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major blow to his sweeping “Liberation Day” duties.

As of Friday morning, American importers will now pay an extra 10% to 12.5% of a product’s value on most goods from nearly 60 countries, including Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, among dozens more. The tariffs could affect 99.4% of imports, according to U.S. trade authorities.

The fresh round of import taxes, first announced late Thursday afternoon, replace a blanket 10% tariff on global goods under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which expired at midnight Friday. Those tariffs invited new legal challenges, including from Democratic-led states.

The latest tariffs were imposed after the Office of the United States Trade Representative allegedly found forced labor conditions in all of the economies investigated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer said in a statement Thursday that Trump “recognizes that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor from global supply chains.  The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.”

Supreme Court ruling

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced two broad investigations in March, less than one month after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s unprecedented global tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, commonly called IEEPA. 

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s blow to his IEEPA tariffs, which he announced in early April 2025 on what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” the government was on the hook for roughly $166 billion in refunds to American importers who already paid the duties.

The latest batch of duties, in effect as of Friday, is the second round of import taxes the Trump administration announced this week. The White House introduced 50% tariffs on most Canadian imports Monday, triggering the duties under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

The Depression-era provision, which has never before been enforced, authorizes the president to impose duties up to 50% of a product’s value in response to discrimination against U.S. commerce.

States Newsroom has spoken with numerous small business owners since 2025 about the effects tariffs have on their capacity to keep prices steady, hire employees, invest in new equipment and inventory, and just generally remain in operation.

‘Ridiculously blunt’

Critics slammed the administration’s new series of sweeping duties on a large swath of the country’s imports.

Scott Lincicome, vice president for general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote Thursday the outcome of the Section 301 investigations were “clearly predetermined” and “both ridiculously blunt and wildly out of proportion to any measurable economic distortion.”

“And the whole thing establishes precedent for an ‘automatic tariff generator’ that Trump or a future president can deploy at will. It makes a mockery of a real issue and might poison legitimate reform. And Congress probably won’t do anything about it,” Lincicome wrote.

Some Republicans in the U.S. House rebuffed Trump’s tariff agenda in February, but legislative change has not emerged. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Thursday the president has “has bled the inflation-battered American people dry with his tariffs.”

“Now he’s coming back for more. Trump’s chaotic tariff taxes have made life harder and more expensive for the American people. Families are paying more for everyday necessities. Small business owners are struggling to keep the lights on. Manufacturers are shedding jobs and farmers are getting squeezed. Meanwhile, Trump and his billionaire family and friends get richer on the backs of working families,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates consumer prices could rise up to 1% under the new tariffs, increasing household costs by roughly $1,100.

If the duties remained in place, the U.S. would gain about $2 trillion in revenue over the next decade, though the number would likely be lower after accounting for negative impacts on the economy, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered 50% tariffs on several Canadian products Monday in response to what his administration describes as retaliatory restrictions on imports of American goods, including alcohol, dairy and automotives.

Trump’s three separate proclamations to impose steep tariffs on items like hockey sticks, wine and cement, came just days after he threatened to slap more tariffs on Canada as smoke from raging wildfires in Ontario blanketed much of the northeastern U.S. through the weekend. But a senior administration official denied the new tariffs were in response to the smoke.

“These are not the so-called wildfire tariffs. The president has asked for options on that, and options are being shared with him. These tariffs are in response to discriminatory treatment by Canada against U.S. products,” the senior administration official said on a call with reporters Monday afternoon.

The tariffs will go into effect Aug. 19.

Trump appeared alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Sunday at the FIFA World Cup trophy ceremony in East Rutherford, New Jersey, but the two leaders did not discuss White House plans for the new tariffs, according to the senior administration official.

Trump triggered the new tariffs under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a Depression-era provision that authorizes the president to impose duties up to 50% of a product’s value in response to discrimination against U.S. commerce. The provision has been long forgotten since the 1940s and has never been enforced, experts say. 

“To our knowledge, Section 338 has not been used for this purpose before,” the senior administration official told reporters. “It’s been on the books for a long time. In our view, the terms are clear: It gives the president this authority in situations where a country discriminates against the United States relative to the treatment given (to) a third country.”

Trump’s unprecedented sweeping tariffs on global goods, including from Canada, imposed in April 2025 under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, were found illegal and overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in February.

The administration was ordered by the U.S. Court of International Trade to refund roughly $166 billion in duties paid by importers under the IEEPA tariffs.

Since the Supreme Court’s major blow to Trump’s trade agenda, the White House has sought other routes to impose tariffs. Almost immediately after the court’s decision, Trump announced a temporary base 10% tariff on all imports under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Those tariffs are now being litigated in trade court.

If you were hoping Slate’s bargain priced electric truck would rescue Canada’s affordable EV market, we’ve got bad news. The startup has confirmed its piccolo pickup isn’t heading north, leaving Canadian buyers to admire it from across the border.

Slate burst onto the scene in 2025 promising a genuinely inexpensive electric truck, and it’s delivered on that promise. Backed by Jeff Bezos, the startup recently confirmed pricing starting at $24,950 for its two-seat pickup, while its Squareback and Fastback SUV conversions begin at $29,950 and $31,950 respectively. Deliveries are currently scheduled to begin in late 2026.

Related: Slate Bets Its Electric Truck Is So Cheap That It’ll Turn A Profit

The company has pitched a radically simple formula. Forget giant touchscreens, powered seats, keyless entry and even power windows. Buyers get a basic electric pickup with hand-crank windows, room for two, a projected 205 miles (330 km) of electric range and the ability to add accessories later instead of financing equipment they might never want.

Unfortunately, Canadian customers won’t get the chance to decide whether that minimalist philosophy makes sense. Speaking to Automotive News Canada, Slate spokesperson Jeff Jablansky confirmed the company’s strategy stops at the US border, saying simply, “We do not have plans to sell vehicles in Canada.”

Jablansky didn’t explain the decision, but economics likely played a major role. Since Slate plans to build its trucks in Indiana, they would face Canada’s retaliatory 25 percent tariffs on American-built vehicles. Add those import duties to exchange rates and the truck’s eye-catching US price suddenly loses much of its magic, potentially climbing into territory that no longer looks like an unbelievable bargain.

Thousands Of Reservations

That’s especially disappointing because affordability has become one of Slate’s biggest selling points. The startup reportedly has around 180,000 reservations, though converting refundable deposits into actual sales remains one of the biggest hurdles facing any new automaker. Whether buyers will really embrace keep-fit windows and almost no standard equipment is another question entirely.

Canadian shoppers looking for an inexpensive electric pickup aren’t completely out of luck, however. Ford has already begun teasing its own compact electric truck, which is expected to start below $30,000 in the US, where it’ll also be built. Unlike the Slate, Ford’s newcomer is planned for Canadian showrooms too, though exactly how tariffs and exchange rates will affect pricing north of the border is unclear. For now, the cheapest new electric truck in America will stay exactly that – an American-only proposition.

Slate Auto

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Strong winds whipped around Doug Bartek, a fifth-generation farmer, as he headed into a grain bin to shovel soybeans onto a conveyor chute. The 60-year-old was anxious at the onset of the spring planting season, rattling off the long list of issues affecting his family’s livelihood at their 2,000-acre farm near Wahoo, Nebraska.

The high cost of fuel, equipment and fertilizer — compounded by the Iran war — and also tariffs, perceived “price gouging” by suppliers, and low soybean prices driven by a global supply glut. All of it weighs on Bartek, who is chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Association.

“Our biggest struggles are our inputs, be it fertilizer, seed, chemical, parts,” Bartek said. “There has been so much drastic markup in all of these. And I just kind of feel like the farmer’s kind of painted in the corner.”

Bartek’s concerns are shared by many Midwest soybean producers. Costs, such as equipment, have crept up over time while soybean prices have stayed low. Tariffs levied by the Trump administration last year and the resulting monthslong trade war with China only made things worse, they say. Then the Iran war bottled up shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, restricting global fertilizer supplies and sending fertilizer prices sky high. A ceasefire deal announced April 7 raised hope that bottlenecks in the strait would abate, but the future of the agreement was uncertain.

“A lot of producers are pretty nervous going into this year,” said Justin Sherlock, a soybean farmer and president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. “It looks like we’re going to have another year of negative returns.”

Years of rising costs, low soybean prices

Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed, food and biofuels, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. That hasn’t always been the case. Before the 1960s soybeans weren’t a major crop in the U.S, according to Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. It wasn’t until the 1990s that soybean production accelerated due to international demand — primarily from China — and soybeans and corn are now dominant in U.S. agriculture.

But U.S. soybean farmers, who typically also grow corn, have been facing financial issues for years even before the onset of the Iran war. Soybean prices have been persistently low in recent years. The global market has been awash in soybeans, driven in part by Brazil, which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest soybean producer years ago.

“If we look at global soybean production over the past several years, it continues to set record after record, after record,” Hart said. “There’s been just large supplies globally, and that has led to depressed prices.”

Meanwhile, Midwest soybean farmers’ costs have risen. Overall farm production expenses, including seed and pesticide, have increased over time, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Operating costs for soybean production have stayed elevated since 2020 and are projected to increase again in 2026, according to the agency.

The cost of land also is a major issue for farmers, experts say. Midwest crop land values have increased. And most regional farmers rent some of their land, according to Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.

Bartek, who rents three-quarters of his land, said landowners are increasing rents, causing further financial strain.

“There’s a lot of what I call absentee landowners that have absolutely no idea what goes on on the farm,” he said. “All they know is their taxes went up and you get to make up the difference, some way, somehow.”

“They’re very concerned about negative margins driven by low prices and high cost,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of farmers. “There’s just a liquidity cash crunch for a lot of them and they’re just trying to figure out how to deal with everything.”

The number of farms in the U.S. has shrunk over time, and consolidation in farming is a long-term trend, though farmers’ financial pressures wrought by high input costs and low commodity prices have contributed, Hart said. Larger farms tend to be more competitive and depend on large, expensive machinery.

“The financial reserves need(ed) on a farm are much greater than they used to be,” Hart said. “We’re a bit more sensitive to the financial conditions these days because so much capital is being utilized within the farm business.”

Tariffs, trade war have lasting impacts

Market forces aren’t the only issue weighing on farmers. Sweeping tariffs levied by President Donald Trump in April 2025 exacerbated a trade war with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. China responded with retaliatory tariffs and effectively boycotted U.S. soybeans, cutting off a major export market for Midwest farmers and driving the price of soybeans even lower.

“When that was announced and soybean prices basically collapsed, if you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK,” said Mike Cerny, a soybean and winter wheat corn farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin. “If you had a mortgage due or payments due or cash flow needs and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough.”

The U.S. and China eventually reached a deal in late 2025. Beijing committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. China has since met its initial soybean purchase goal, and the Trump administration also rolled out a $12 billion temporary aid package in December to boost farmers affected by the trade war.

But the damage is already done, experts and farmers say. While China’s renewed purchases and the federal payments are helping, it’s not enough to recover farmers’ losses. Even after federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per harvested acre of soybeans in the 2025 crop, according to the American Soybean Association. And the trade war further pushed China toward competing soybean exporters, such as Brazil — accelerating a trend of declining U.S. soybean exports to China.

“When China decided to stop purchasing, we couldn’t find enough other markets to replace those sales,” Hart said. “We’re still feeling the impacts today. When you look at where soybean exports are today versus where we would normally expect them to be, we’re still running anywhere from 15% to 20% behind normal.”

Joseph Glauber, former chief economist at the Department of Agriculture between 2008 and 2014, said global competitors to U.S. soybean farmers gained from the trade war.

“When China has put on tariffs against the U.S. they’ve tended to buy them from Brazil or Argentina, largely Brazil,” Glauber added. “We’re not nearly as dominant in the world as we used to be in terms of the global export market for soybeans.”

Iran war drove up fuel, fertilizer costs

After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, a severe slowdown in shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz sent the price of oil soaring. The shipping disruption also largely stopped the export of nitrogen fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf and limited access to key fertilizer ingredients. The price of urea, the most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, skyrocketed.

Soybeans don’t require nitrogen fertilizer, but it’s vital for corn, and most soybean farmers also grow corn. About half the global supply of urea comes from the Middle East, and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are two of the top sources of U.S. fertilizer imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The U.S. and Iran last week agreed to a two-week ceasefire that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but traffic remained slowed amid disagreements over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, and the price of urea remains elevated.

Many Midwest farmers bought their fertilizer well in advance of the spring planting season. But some farmers who didn’t buy early face elevated prices. Dave Walton, a corn, soybean and hay farmer in Iowa and vice president of the American Soybean Association, said in March that some of his neighbors didn’t have cash on hand last fall to buy fertilizer and were struggling to budget for fertilizer due to high prices.

The war also caused gasoline and diesel prices to surge, causing further headaches for farmers. Oil prices dropped following the ceasefire announcement, but the war and the closure of the strait will have lasting impacts on farmers, said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. Facilities in the Middle East that are critical for exporting chemicals, oil and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the war, and it will take time for supply chains to recover, he said.

“Facilities have been hit, like liquid natural gas plants,” Goldstein added. “You are also looking at a big supply crunch in commodity chemicals, which are the inputs for crop chemicals.”

“We burn a lot of diesel fuel,” said Chris Gould, a corn and soybean farmer in Maple Park, Illinois. “It’s hard to say if I’m gonna come out ahead or behind on this whole deal. But I suspect I’m gonna come out behind.”

Concerns about the future

Farmers’ financial problems are showing up in some measures. Farm bankruptcies, while still relatively low, continued to climb in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a survey of 400 farmers conducted by researchers at the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture in late March, almost half said their farm operation is financially worse off than it was a year ago.

Goldstein, the Morningstar analyst, said farmers’ high costs and low revenues contributed to the spike in bankruptcies between 2024 and 2025. If costs rise faster than crop prices going forward, he added, that “would strain farmers again and likely lead to more bankruptcies.”

After 43 years of farming, Bartek said the smell of fresh dirt still gets him excited for spring planting. But he’s also heard of farmer suicides, bankruptcies and “retirement sales” where farmers are forced to auction off their operations due to financial problems. Bartek compares farmers to gamblers who put “millions of dollars in the dirt” hoping for returns.

At times, Bartek doubts his own decision to go into farming. He’s also worried about his son, who purchased a farm a few years ago.

Bartek wonders: “Did I do the right thing helping him get into farming?”

This story is a collaboration between Lee Enterprises and The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Already under financial pressure, Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs, Iran war is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.