LYNDON STATION, Wis. — President Donald Trump is escalating his trade war strategy after the United States Supreme Court ruled against some of his tariff policies, now Wisconsin farmers are bracing for continued market uncertainty.
In a 6-3 ruling the justices said the president’s use of an emergency powers law to create the tariffs was unconstitutional. In response, the Trump administration used the 1974 trade act to enact a 15% global tariff.
For Wisconsin’s agricultural community, the tariff announcement represents a wave of uncertainty as the growing season is just around the corner.
“I think the uncertainty scares anybody,” said Mitch Giebel, a lifelong farmer in Juneau County. “When talking about the tariffs, I think there’s good intentions in place. But it affects the global supply chain.”
Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union and a dairy farmer, said tariffs create a double burden for agricultural producers. Farmers face higher costs for essential supplies while simultaneously receiving lower prices for their products.
“A bunch of the inputs that farmers have like seed, fertilizer equipment parts labor anything that had aluminum and steel in it. Those were all costs us more last year,” Von Ruden said.
Von Ruden noted that farmers’ reactions to the tariff policies often split along partisan lines.
“A lot of farmers on the Republican side are saying that, ‘you know, let’s wait and see. You know, we still got to ride this out yet.’ And we’re those that have voted Democrat in the past [are] still really uneasy and mostly because of that uncertainty,” Von Ruden said.