Tariffs stoke anxiety with Minnesota officials over uncertain impacts
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Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar said she’s concerned about the consequences the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration may have on the country’s standing with international trade partners. She spoke as some of the tariffs went into effect.
“Our businesses export to the world, and we want to keep that,” Klobuchar said. “We don’t want all these other countries trading with each other, and we’re left out of the scene. Ninety-some percent of our potential customers live outside of our borders.”
The Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum, along with 25 percent duties on Mexican and Canadian goods. There’s also a 10 percent hike on oil imported from Canada. The European Union responded with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. industrial and farm products.
President Donald Trump has plans to also tax imports from the European Union, Brazil and South Korea by charging “reciprocal” rates starting April 2.
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Trump challenged U.S. allies by vowing to take back wealth he says were “stolen” by other countries.
Tariff worries
Klobuchar said the higher tariffs are stoking anxiety about an economic downturn.
“I think we’re already seeing this incredibly volatile stock market, and a lot of this is uncertainty,” Klobuchar said. “I know from a farmer standpoint and a business standpoint, there’s nothing harder when you’re operating on slim margins to deal with more uncertainty, and so it’s a combination of things, of course. But, the stock market, just volatility, is a really, really big concern right now.”
U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, also joined Klobuchar on the call. Kelly said that Arizona being a border state is heavily affected by the tariffs because Mexico is its biggest trade partner. He added it is his constituents who end up with higher costs. He agreed international partnerships are getting tested.
“I think it’s already damaged our relationships, and I think it’s a lot harder to repair a relationship than it is to wreck one,” Kelly said.
“The other thing to remember about tariffs is it’s a lot harder to get rid of them than it is to add them. They come off very slow because one country isn’t going to remove a tariff without a trade agreement with the other. Those things take a long time to negotiate. I think the next president is going to have a very challenging road ahead of him or her to unwind the destruction that this president has put to the economy, not only of our own country, but of our allies.”
Farm impact
Farmers are also navigating the tariffs imposed by the federal government and the uncertainty of their impact. Minnesota Farm Bureau President Dan Glessing says farmers lose access to key foreign markets and lose opportunities to open new ones when agricultural goods are targeted in trade wars.
“Tariffs don’t just hurt farmers and ranchers, they also affect thousands of workers in related industries like shipping, processing [and] agribusiness,” Glessing said. “Farmers are already working on thin margins and are having to make significant decisions on how to keep their farm going not only for themselves, but the next generation.”
Glessing added that more than 20 percent of U.S. agricultural production goes to foreign markets. He said that during the last eight years, he doesn’t believe there was a lot of strong emphasis placed on expanding foreign trade that helped to grow the U.S. economy and distributing domestically grown agricultural products.
“The true impact of the cost of the tariffs really won’t be known until we come out with certainty of negotiated trade deals on the other side of the tariff war,” Glessing said. “We believe in a strong agricultural trade agenda that should focus on maintaining existing markets and enforcing trade agreements and securing new ones that expand opportunities for you as farmers.”