Agriculture Escapes Impact of Donald Trump's Tariffs

The President of Global AgriTrends says, despite the rhetoric, most of agriculture has escaped any impact from Donald Trump's tariffs."What’s next for the Global Pork Market" was among the topics discussed this week as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2025 in Saskatoon.

Brett Stuart, the President of Global AgriTrends, a firm that provides global market research, analysis, and forecasting, says we've all been front row participants of Donald Trump's trade agenda as, for the past year we've heard the rhetoric about tariffs and tariffs have come on, tariffs have been reduced and put back on.

Quote-Brett Stuart-Global AgriTrends:

Bottom line I would say is this. I think Trump's agenda has pretty much rolled out on tariffs. The impact on agriculture I would say has been quite minimal, compared to what we thought it could be. You can look at U.S. Canada, our agriculture trade is still pretty much all tariff free.

The one industry that's been affected is Brazil. Brazil beef to the U.S. pays a 76 percent tariff. It has stopped most of that from coming but, outside of Brazilian beef, we really haven't seen much of an impact.U.S. beef prices are high. We're going to have record beef imports on a year that we impose tariffs.
That would be a little surprising. But we're also seeing new deals.

A week ago, President Trump was in Southeast Asia. He signed deals with four countries down there, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand. We'll see what those turn out to be. He also announced a deal with China that removes the retaliation tariffs. That pretty much takes us back maybe to par of where we were but we'll see where these deals go.

The wild card is this, the Supreme Court is reviewing the legality of whether he can impose tariffs and so, as early as maybe even January February we'll find out what they rule and their ruling will stand. So, there is a possibility that Trump could lose his authority to impose tariffs.That would be a big change.

Stuart notes the 25 percent tariff imposed in March on Canadian goods headed south and then raised to 35 percent in August, only applies to products not covered by the Canada U.S. Mexico agreement, which today accounts for only about 15 percent of trade with the U.S. and doesn't impact agriculture.