American farmers are being squeezed by a perfect storm of economic and political pressure. Trump’s sweeping new tariffs have severed access to key export markets, while aggressive ICE enforcement has scared much of the country’s agricultural workforce into hiding.

The result? Crops going unharvested. Prices collapsing. Bankruptcy looming.

Markets shut down

Over 20% of farm income in the U.S. comes from exports. But Trump’s 2025 “Liberation Day” tariffs, and the retaliation they triggered, have shut the door on critical markets like China. Soybeans, corn, wheat, pork, dairy — all of it is suddenly harder to move overseas.

The Chinese government has already slapped a 34% tariff on all U.S. agricultural imports. The result is instant: American farmers are watching contracts vanish and prices drop. Zippy Duvall, President of the American Farm Bureau, warned bluntly: “These tariffs will drive up the cost of critical supplies, and retaliatory tariffs will make American-grown products more expensive globally.”

No one left to harvest

Meanwhile, a crackdown on undocumented immigrants has left farms short-staffed and paralyzed.

Roughly half of all U.S. farm labor is done by undocumented workers. With ICE raids ramping up and right-wing officials boasting about workplace crackdowns, farmworkers are disappearing overnight.

It’s hard to overstate the damage. Farmers are losing money on both ends: they can’t sell abroad at the same level, and they can’t harvest at home. The supply chain is collapsing at its base.

This is not the result of natural disaster or market forces. It’s policy. It’s deliberate. It’s a war on the very system that props up American agriculture.

Nothing left but bailouts

Behind closed doors, Trump officials are considering another round of farm bailouts — the third since 2018. But farmers aren’t just hurting financially. They’re feeling betrayed.

“We supported this president,” one Iowa farmer told Politico. “But he’s killing us. We’ve got no workers, no buyers, and no backup plan.”

The irony is bitter. The party that claimed to represent rural America has handed it over to chaos. And farmers, once loyal, are now wondering how much more they can take.