The Economist reported on April 27, 2026 that the cumulative impact of Trump's tariff policy on American farmers — the rural constituency that delivered him both presidential elections — has reached the worst sustained agricultural downturn since the 1980s farm crisis. The Economist's piece (paywalled in full) opens with Sam Watson, a Republican Georgia state senator and farmer who has come home for what may be his last harvest: 'We used to just pray for rain. Now we're praying on geopolitics, too.'
The documented data behind the framing is severe. U.S. soybean exports to China for the year-to-date through March 19, 2026 totaled 11.2 million metric tons — roughly half the 21.8 million tons exported in the same period the prior year. China responded to Trump's tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs and, for several months, importing zero U.S. soybeans. Brazil and Argentina filled the gap. American farm bankruptcies rose 46 percent in 2025 — 315 Chapter 12 filings, the highest rate since 2020 and the third consecutive annual increase. America lost approximately 15,000 farms in 2025 alone, bringing the total from over 2 million in 2018 to roughly 1.9 million today. Agricultural economists estimate U.S. farmer losses on this year's crop at $35 billion to $43 billion.
The political question the Economist raises — and does not fully answer — is why farmers continue to back Trump despite the documented harm. Theories vary: cultural alignment (immigration, guns, abortion) that overrides economic interest; expectation of bailout (Trump's first-term tariff bailouts paid farmers $28 billion in market-facilitation payments, more than three-quarters of which went to large operations); a belief that the pain is temporary and will pay off in 'better deals' eventually; sustained influence of conservative talk radio and Sinclair-affiliated local stations in agricultural counties; and the absence of a credible Democratic alternative most farmers feel comfortable supporting.
The broader pattern documented this month is that the Iran war, the canceled Islamabad talks, the Estonia HIMARS delay, the Pentagon retaliation memo on Spain and the Falklands, the NBC war damage cover-up, and now the farm-economy data all describe the same underlying failure: the administration is generating large, documented costs to specific constituencies while telling those constituencies the opposite is happening. Sam Watson is Trump's voter. He may also be Trump's last harvest.
A May 27, 2026 analysis in Reason, using North Dakota State University's Agricultural Trade Monitor, quantified the China-specific damage: between March 2025 and February 2026, annualized U.S. agricultural exports to China fell by nearly $15 billion. Soybeans alone dropped from about $12 billion (2024) to $3 billion (2025), with corn, wheat, and pork also hit. Iowa farmers lost roughly $1.2 billion in China-bound exports. The decline followed Trump's escalation of tariffs on Chinese goods (from 20% to as high as 135%, later easing to about 50%) and China's retaliatory tariffs on American farm goods (as high as 147%, later 32%). Trump authorized an $11 billion farm bailout in December. The study cautioned that its figures measure lost exports to China specifically, not necessarily lost exports overall, since some sales may be redirected to other markets.