© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Harvest Public Media is a reporting collaboration focused on issues of food, fuel and field. Based at KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri, Harvest covers agriculture-related topics through a network of reporters and partner stations throughout the Midwest.

Steel, Aluminum Tariffs Would Bring Deals For Consumers, Headaches For Farm Economy

Amy Mayer
/
Harvest Public Media
Tariffs on steel and aluminum would increase the cost of farm machinery and structures like steel grain bins.

When President Donald Trump follows through on his plan to tax imported steel and aluminum, American farmers will get less money for some crops and pay more for machinery.

Farm groups say their members worry the countries targeted by the tariffs — the list of which has not been finalized by the Trump administration — will tax farm products. The European Union already has threatened imports of corn, rice, cranberries, peanut butter, kidney beans, orange juice and even bourbon, which is usually made from corn.

There is a slight silver lining for consumers, however, because prices of those products may drop in the U.S.

The EU and China are large enough customers that a disruption in trade would impact global prices. If they are buying less, “that means that we have more left in the United States and, all things equal, prices will go down,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln agricultural economist Wes Peterson said.

But, he added, tariffs are trade-offs: If consumers get a better deal on food, it’ll be at the expense of farmers, “who would be selling less, and also then would be getting lower prices.”

Farm income is already expected to drop in 2018,to the lowest level since 2006, due to depressed prices for crops like corn and wheat.

And just like cars, appliances and foods packaged in steel and aluminum cans, farmers could end up paying more for farm machinery and equipment, from tractors to grain storage bins to metal machine sheds.

Trump is hoping tariffs on foreign-made steel will make the domestic market more competitive, but already, prices are going up at American mills.

“What we’re seeing is steel prices are very quickly increasing to highs we haven’t seen since 2011 or 2008,” according to Phil Raimondo, president and CEO ofBehlen Manufacturing, which uses steel to make buildings, livestock water tanks and grain elevators.

Raimondo added that the Nebraska-based company is already warning customers that prices for its products will go up 5 to 10 percent to cover the cost of the expected tariffs.

According to an Agri-Pulse story, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says taxing steel and aluminum imports could give the United States an edge in trade negotiations, including the ongoing talks to revise NAFTA.

Groups that represent farmers are not on board.

“President Trump’s plans to place U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum presents a real and viable threat to the future of U.S. agricultural trade and the prosperity of American agriculture,” Nebraska Farm Bureau president Steve Nelson said in a statement.

A trade war will be harder to win and cause more conflict than Trump may be anticipating, Peterson said, even if it comes with a discount on bourbon.

“Everybody loses because there are two sides to these things,” Peterson said. “Consumers pay higher prices or producers are hurt through some retaliatory policy.”

--

Follow Grant Gerlock on Twitter @ggerlock.

 
To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

 

Harvest Public Media's reporter at NET News, where he started as Morning Edition host in 2008. He joined Harvest Public Media in July 2012. Grant has visited coal plants, dairy farms, horse tracks and hospitals to cover a variety of stories. Before going to Nebraska, Grant studied mass communication as a grad student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and completed his undergrad at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. He grew up on a farm in southwestern Iowa where he listened to public radio in the tractor, but has taken up city life in Lincoln, Neb.