Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Pundits are fond of saying that elections are about the economy, and people’s relationship to it. “It’s the economy, stupid” and all that. It may be true—but there’s certainly evidence to the contrary.

Look no further than the reaction to Donald Trump’s tariff proposals from Iowans whose livelihoods depend on the agriculture sector.

Maybe the more accurate comment would be “What reaction?”

The Republican presidential nominee is proposing a tariff of up to 20 percent on everything the United States imports from other countries, except China. He advocates a 60 percent tariff on all goods from that nation.

Recent history shows that hikes in U.S. tariff rates on imports generally prompt other nations to retaliate, in the form of their tariff increases against U.S. goods, or even making importation of certain American products illegal. That’s particularly evident in the case of American soybeans.

There’s plenty of evidence. When Trump was president in 2018 and 2019, he imposed 10 percent tariff increases on a broad range of U.S. imports from China. In response, China imposed retaliatory tariffs on a number of United States products, including foodstuffs like soybeans.

China is by far the biggest foreign buyer of our soybeans. In 2023, that country purchased more than $15 billion worth of American soybeans, more than the value of soybean purchases by at least our nine next highest foreign buyers taken together. One in three soybean rows in American fields is exported to China. And China doesn’t take kindly to being the target of American tariff policy.

In 2018 and 2019, direct U.S. agricultural export losses from retaliatory tariffs imposed by other nations, including China, totaled more than $27 billion. China accounted for 95 percent of those U.S. losses, and soybeans accounted for more than 70 percent of the 95 percent. The price of soybeans in the United States dropped by $2 per bushel.

The effect on Iowa was dramatic. Iowa led the nation in annualized losses from retaliatory tariff action, at $1.46 billion, representing 11 percent of the total losses. (The $1.46 billion was on an annualized basis, and the retaliatory tariffs were active in both 2018 and 2019.) Iowa’s losses also resulted from China’s retaliation against pork exports from the U.S., in which Iowa farmers were also significant players, although pork losses did not nearly approach the size of the soybean export losses.

During bilateral trade negotiations in 2020, China promised to boost its purchases of certain U.S. exports by $200 billion above 2017 baseline levels during the two-year period of 2020 and 2021. But China never followed through on that pledge. The commitment gave the Trump administration some good press, but there was no way to enforce it.

All of that happened during Trump’s presidency (early 2017 to early 2021), when he imposed 10 percent tariff increases against China. Now he’s strongly advocating a 60 percent increase against all Chinese products sold in the United States. Meanwhile, China can erase waivers it has granted for U.S. soybean exports at any time.

And it isn’t as though China has no alternatives. Brazil, Argentina, and other South American countries now represent the largest bloc of world soybean production, surpassing the United States. South America would love to increase its soybean exports to China, as has already happened in recent years.

It’s not only the ag sector, particularly Iowa’s, that would be damaged by Trump’s tariff proposals. The Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where Trump went to college, estimates that his proposed tariffs would cost an average American family more than $500 a year in higher prices. Other estimates range as high as $4,000 a year, taking into account the related effects of the high tariffs.

And because many American manufacturers rely on imported products, from China and elsewhere, for components for their operations, foreign retaliation to Trump’s proposed tariffs would cost them significantly and likely result in employee layoffs.

Tariffs are not paid by financial transfers from an exporting nation to the United States government, as Trump suggests. The importing business that buys the product pays the tariff. Those buyers then pass along the cost of the tax, or a portion of it, to the ultimate American consumer, who pays more for that particular product. The result is higher inflation. In effect, tariffs are a tax paid by American buyers.

In summary, Trump’s proposed tariff increases, especially the 60 percent on Chinese products, would drastically affect Iowa’s farmers and its ag-dependent businesses. The U.S. government spent well above $20 billion during the Trump administration tariff dispute with China to help mitigate its effect on American farmers, a huge figure but not enough to fully compensate them for their losses.

Voters can’t look to Congress to challenge Trump’s plans for high tariffs. Until the early 1930s Congress followed the Constitution’s implication that the legislative branch determines trade policy. But since then Congress has steadily surrendered its role in tariff policy, and today the president has near-unlimited power to determine those levels, so long as he or she informs Congress of the reasons for the decision.

So what has been the political effect of the Trump administration trade war with China? And what would be the effect of his many-times-higher tariff proposals if elected?

Iowa, and its ag sector, appear to remain solidly in the Trump camp. Go figure.


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Top photo of Donald Trump in Zebulon, Georgia was published on his campaign’s Facebook page on October 23.