Central Valley farmers ‘caught in the middle’
As midterm election looms for crucial races, many feeling the sting from President Trump’s tariffs
Nervous walnut farmers watch the price of their crops drop by the day. Dairymen worry about delayed shipments as tariffs mount. Orange sellers fret about their fruit spoiling while it waits for inspections at Chinese ports.
As harvest season fast approaches in the Central Valley, farmers are feeling the pinch from President Donald Trump’s trade war — injecting a new issue into crucial congressional races up and down the region and stoking fears among Republicans that it could hurt them in November.
Trump has levied tariffs on a host of products from around the
world, and countries such as China, India, Mexico and Canada have responded by targeting U.S. farmers, slapping their own taxes on imports from America’s breadbasket. That makes U.S. crops more expensive overseas, reducing demand and cutting into farmers’ bottom lines.
California is in the crosshairs: In 2016, the Golden State exported just over $2 billion in agricultural products to China, with the largest exports being pistachios, almonds, wine, oranges and dairy, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. All of those crops have a large presence in the Valley.
Some farmers are fuming as agriculture markets are shaken by the disputes.
“This seems to be a game of ‘I dare you’ from the White House, without a strategic plan,” said Mark McAfee, a dairy farmer in Fresno, registered Democrat and California Farmers Union board member. “We’re caught in the middle.”
The administration has proposed $12 billion in aid for farms affected by the trade dispute, including direct payments to farmers and a program to purchase surplus crops. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has said the payments would be targeted for soybeans, corn, wheat, and other crops that are more common in the Midwest, not “specialty” crops such as from the almond and citrus trees that line vast swaths of the Valley.
Trump has urged farmers to be patient, saying his aggressive approach on trade is necessary to win American exports a better deal — a stance many farmers sympathize with.
“Our farmers are true patriots,” Trump declared at a rally in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday. “You know what our farmers are saying? ‘It’s OK, we can take it.’ ”
But Republican members of Congress from the Valley, several of whom are facing tough re-election races, are walking a tightrope: raising concerns about the tariffs’ impact and pushing for more aid while avoiding any real criticism of the president, who’s still deeply popular with most of his party.
Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, said in an interview that the retaliatory tariffs have had a negative “immediate impact” on his district, but that the president’s trade policies would be helpful in the long term.
“Nobody wants the tariffs,” Denham said, “but I think everybody I’ve talked to understands that there’ve been imbalances and unfairness that have happened in many of these countries.”
That doesn’t convince voters like John Casazza, a 74-year-old walnut farmer and processor in his congressional district who has traveled to China to help develop the market for his product there. Now, he says, Chinese tariffs have dried up demand for walnuts and led to a steep drop in the price he earns for his crop. He expects to lose at least a million dollars on the massive vats of nuts that are sitting in his Modesto-area processing plant.
“We’re looking at one of the saddest markets that we’ve seen in years,” said Casazza, a Republican whose family has been growing nuts here for four generations. “Even if they ended this thing tomorrow, the damage has been done.”
Casazza has voted for Denham in the past, but he said he wouldn’t be supporting him this year, largely out of anger over the trade issue.
“I think he’s Trump’s lapdog,” Casazza said.
Of course, the administration could resolve trade disputes in the next few weeks, helping to avoid impacts on the midterm election. Negotiations are ongoing, and Mexico and Canada said last week that they’re getting closer to a trade deal with the U.S. to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But farmers are getting desperate, and the longer the tariffs stretch on, opinion could turn against the president and Republican members of Congress, observers say — especially as farmers begin harvesting nuts and fruit and inking contracts to sell their crop over the next weeks and months.
“As we start to see a fall in orders, whether that’s almonds, walnuts or dairy products, then the mood will swing very, very quickly,” predicted Jamie Johansson, the president of the California Farm Bureau Federation.
Meanwhile, Democratic challengers in the Valley are hoping to turn the issue into an election-year line of attack, arguing that the incumbents haven’t done enough to help farmers or halt Trump’s trade war.
“Our farmers and families don’t want a bailout — they want to enjoy free trade,” said TJ Cox, a businessman and Democrat running against Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, who owns two nut processing plants. “They should all be marching there up Pennsylvania Avenue demanding that the administration stop these tariffs.”
Valadao, a dairy farmer, said in a statement that he’s met with Vice President Mike Pence and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to share his constituents’ concerns.
“We must ensure these funds are equitably distributed to specialty crop farmers and we must recognize this is not a long-term solution,” he wrote.
Denham, Valadao and a half-dozen other California members of Congress who represent agricultural areas also wrote a letter to Perdue last week asking for a bigger chunk of the aid.
The retaliatory tariffs are “threatening the economic livelihood of our businesses and communities,” the members wrote, adding that growers of specialty crops such as citrus and nuts should “receive a share of the $12 billion mitigation funding that is adequately proportional to the damage they will face.”
That’s not enough, said Denham’s Democratic challenger, investor Josh Harder.
“The Trump administration is playing with fire, and farmers are paying the price,” he said. “A weakly worded letter isn’t going to cut it.”
Central Valley farmers who worked long and hard to cultivate their Asian markets are frustrated to see them possibly slip away. The largest worry, experts say, is that tariffs could force importers in China and elsewhere to switch to products from Australia, New Zealand or other countries. Then, even if the trade war gets defused, they might find it easier to stick with their new sources instead of switching back to the Valley.
Tom Nassif, the president of the Western Growers Association and one of Trump’s agricultural advisers during the 2016 campaign, said the administration needs to do more to help farmers.
Trump’s trade policies “come at an extremely high cost for agriculture, and if this trade policy is going to continue, then we have to have more mitigation than what has been suggested,” Nassif said. While he said he supported the goals of the president’s policy, “we cannot be the victim in this.”
“I don’t know of any trade dispute that has caused as much market disruption as this one has, by a long shot,” Nassif said.