Thoughts from the Tractor Seat: The Tariff Trap — When Tough Talk Costs Us the Farm

By Ken Polehn

The Dalles, Ore., July 20, 2025 — They say tariffs are about fairness. They call them leverage. They tell us to "hold the line" for the good of the nation. But when you’re the one standing in the line of fire, all that tough talk starts to sound a little hollow.

We’ve been here before. Back in 2018, when trade wars heated up, farmers like me were told to “take one for the team.” So we did. Soybeans are piled up in bins. Markets dried up. Foreign buyers turned to Brazil and didn’t always come back. The USDA handed out relief checks, but they didn’t make us whole. It was like patching a leaking roof with duct tape.

Now, here we go again.

With a fresh round of tariffs on the horizon, farm families across the country are bracing. We know what happens when politics play chicken with our markets: we pay more to farm and get paid less to produce. That’s a one-two punch no family business can take for long.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, specialty crops like cherries and pears rely on global markets. We don’t have the luxury of sitting still. Reciprocal tariffs make our products more expensive overseas, so buyers either go elsewhere or offer less. That hurts family farms that depend on stable export prices to survive. And while we’re losing buyers or profits, we’re also paying more for fertilizers, chemicals, equipment, and packaging — many of which are imported or priced globally.

And it’s not just landowners or operators feeling the squeeze. These pressures ripple through our whole farm community — to the full-time employees who’ve stood by us for years, to the seasonal and migrant workers who return each harvest, and to their families who count on this work to feed their own children. Every lost market, every dropped order, every cut in hours or acres affects real people. Kids in our schools. Families in our churches. Workers who’ve helped build these farms, season after season.

When agriculture thrives, the local economy thrives. Farm dollars turn into paychecks for workers, business for local suppliers, equipment dealers, fuel companies, processors, truckers, and more. But when our profit margins are squeezed by policy decisions out of our control, everyone downstream feels it.

Worse still, this uncertainty eats away at the future. It’s hard to plan ahead when the rug can be pulled out from under you with one signature from D.C. Try telling a banker you want to expand your orchard when trade policy shifts faster than the weather.

Some folks still support tariffs, hoping they’ll lead to better long-term deals. I get it. We all want fair trade. But hoping for better while bleeding today is a dangerous bet — especially when you're already stretched thin by regulations, labor costs, and the wild swings of the market.

Let’s be honest: farmers have become pawns in a high-stakes game. And pawns rarely win.

We need a policy built on stability, not slogans. We need markets we can count on — not price swings born from press conferences. And we need leaders who understand that putting American agriculture first doesn’t mean putting farmers — or the people who work alongside us — last.

From my seat on the tractor, I’m not asking for handouts. I’m asking for a fighting chance — a level field to grow, harvest, and sell the fruits of our labor without being used as leverage in a trade war we didn’t start.

Until then, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done: plant the seed, trust the soil, and pray for wisdom in high places.

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