The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
The challenges of farming – from the weather to volatile commodity prices to rising input costs – are difficult enough without adding chaos and unpredictability into federal farm policy. Wisconsin agriculture, a key driver of the state’s economy, needs predictability and certainty in policy making.
I led the policy efforts of the nation’s dairy farmers during the Trump administration. Instead of certainty, what we experienced time and again from his administration was chaos and unpredictability.
It’s worth remembering just how difficult 2017-2020 really was. From a total cash receipts standpoint – the value of all products sold – Wisconsin farmers ran in place. Receipts were down during that period, from a high of $11.3 billion in 2017 to $11.2 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, farm production costs kept rising. When you’re running in place, you’re falling behind.
Since then, it’s been a different story. During 2021, the first year of the Biden-Harris administration, cash receipts for the state’s farmers increased nearly 15 percent from 2020’s level, to $12.9 billion. Farmers saw even bigger increases in 2022, and by last year, Wisconsin’s agricultural cash receipts of $15.5 billion were 35 to 40 percent higher than during any year of the Trump administration.
Of course, market forces of supply and demand have the biggest impact on farm income. Farmers excel at bringing the supply; but they need government policies that help increase demand. Here is where the chaos and unpredictability of the Trump years really hurt Wisconsin and all of U.S. agriculture.
Trump launched a haphazard trade war at countries all around the world costing farmers $29 billion in lost exports due to retaliatory tariffs and giving up markets to our competitors. He yanked the United States out of a massive Asia-Pacific trade deal that would have directly benefited Wisconsin farmers and had the added strategic advantage of blocking China. Instead, many of those Pacific nations now rely more on China – a result directly opposite to what most Republican and Democratic policymakers want.
Even though Mexico and Canada had become two of the largest markets for many U.S. agricultural commodities (including dairy) under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump blew that up too. The ensuing chaos and market instability among our strongest trading partners will be felt for years.
When the dust settled on the negotiations, the new U.S.-Mexico-Canadian Agreement did little for dairy. Despite Trump’s claims that he fixed Canadian policies that hurt U.S. dairy, it’s been another empty promise. More focused on headlines than results, Trump got snookered by the Canadians, and we still don’t have the promised increased access to our market to the north.
Instead of expanding our agricultural export markets, we lost market share under his administration. Not unsurprisingly, farmer bankruptcies reached a record high under Trump. What was once a bright spot for U.S. agriculture – exporting more than we import – under Trump became an ag trade deficit with the rest of the world.
On another issue important to farmers in Wisconsin, much of the milk produced on Wisconsin farms, as well as the majority of the milk in the US, comes from farms employing immigrant workers, many of whom are undocumented. Sending those valuable workers away, as Trump has vowed to do, would cripple farms, forcing many to drastically cut production or go out of business. The impact on all the businesses that support farmers, indeed the state’s entire rural economy, would be devastating.
What will help us recruit and keep a reliable workforce is giving farmers more access to legal workers through a transparent and easy-to-use visa process and supporting those who comply with the rules so they are not undercut by those who don’t.
That’s the approach in the Bipartisan Border Security package that a few months ago Trump successfully urged House Republicans to block because he feared it would solve the problem and hurt his election prospects. Vice President Harris supported that bipartisan agreement and has committed to tackling this intractable issue in a balanced and intelligent way to strengthen our economy and our communities.
The challenges before us are many, but they are certainly surmountable. We need intelligent, serious leaders who are committed to finding workable solutions, not more platitudes and grievances that may make you chuckle but do nothing to solve problems. For Wisconsin agriculture, Trump was bad enough the first time.
Let’s not go back. Let’s move forward.
– Mulhern is a Wisconsin native and former president and chief executive officer of the National Milk Producers Federation.
