Recent years have been tumultuous for American farmers and ranchers. Thanks to advanced technologies and generous subsidies, their products have become so abundant that the United States usually ends up exporting about 20 percent of its agricultural output abroad. To keep growing, U.S. farmers and ranchers need better access to markets abroad. But U.S. agriculture and trade policies run counter to the more liberalized and open markets that would benefit U.S. farmers. These obstacles didn’t originate with President Donald Trump. He’s raised them higher, to be sure, but only within a system that was already deeply flawed.
One of Trump’s first actions as president was to make good on a campaign pledge to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a promising free-trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations signed in early 2016. No one would have gained more from the TPP than U.S. farmers and ranchers, who would have seen significantly improved access to the notoriously closed agricultural markets of Asian countries such as Japan. Following the same refrain, Trump then threatened to withdraw the United States from the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, before settling on minor revisions of the 25-year-old pact.
