Joseph Glauber offers a one-year progress report on President Trump’s tariffs on agricultural products.
One year after Liberation Day, the trade outlook for US agriculture remains murky. By the end of 2025, US agricultural imports were significantly lower than in 2024, to an important extent because of higher tariffs. However, fearing the adverse political and other consequences from tariffs’ effects on food prices, the administration granted exemptions from the Liberation Day and subsequent tariff increases for some agricultural commodities. Nonetheless, higher tariffs remain for numerous other agricultural and food products. The consequence is that domestic processors and groceries will pay higher prices for those imported goods and their domestically produced competitors. Thus, households will pay more for many of the foods they purchase and face higher living costs.
US agricultural exports have been hurt because of Chinese retaliation and consumer boycotts in Canada. It remains to be seen whether deals with China and other countries will provide increased market access for US exporters. This is not least because those deals contain “get out of jail” clauses to allow the US government to renege on major provisions of the agreements, leading the rest of the world to increasingly view the US as an untrustworthy trading partner.
Finally, China’s retaliatory tariffs on US exports remain, which means US access to the Chinese market is less in the hands of private buyers (as it was before the trade wars began) than in the hands of China’s state-owned trading companies. Those companies may have to comply with their government’s commitments on minimum soybean imports from the US between 2026 and 2028. However, they likely will have no economic incentives to exceed those obligations.
Finally, the Supreme Court decision in Learning Resources has questioned the status of these agreements, as most of them were negotiated under the IEEPA tariffs. We do not know what the impacts will be if the Trump “supplemental” tariffs are reinstated once the Section 301 investigations are completed. If 2025 is any guide, the path forward in 2026 seems likely to be almost as rocky for US agriculture.
