Farmers Squeezed from Both Sides - The Rural Opportunity Democrats Can’t Afford to Miss
Tariffs and war have destabilized Minnesota agriculture. Democrats now need an agenda that offers farmers more than criticism of Trump.
Big Picture
As the Iran War drags on and fallout from President Trump’s tariffs continues, Trump has handed Minnesota Democrats a political opening in rural Minnesota - but that does not mean rural voters will automatically take it.
Minnesota farmers are accustomed to risk.
They cannot control the weather. They cannot determine the price of corn in Chicago or the size of Brazil’s soybean crop. They cannot prevent disease outbreaks, equipment failures or droughts. However, the newest pressures bearing down on Minnesota agriculture are not uncontrollable acts of nature – they are the consequences of deliberate decisions made in Washington.
Trump’s tariffs have disrupted Minnesota agriculture’s most important export markets while the Iran War has simultaneously increased the price of fuel and fertilizer—the basic inputs farmers need to produce and transport a crop. The result is a punishing two-sided squeeze where farmers are receiving less dependable prices for what they sell AND paying more for what they need to buy.
For Minnesota Democrats, that reality presents both a responsibility and an opportunity: make clear that the party is prepared to deliver something farmers have not received from Washington—economic stability.
The Revenue Side of Farmers’ Equation
Minnesota agriculture revenue is particularly vulnerable to global disruption because it is one of the country’s leading agricultural-export states.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture estimates that Minnesota exports approximately $9.2 billion in agricultural products each year, including soybeans, corn, feed and pork; with its largest markets being China, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Soybeans are especially important. The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association estimates that soybean exports generate approximately $2 billion annually and that roughly one out of every four rows of Minnesota soybeans is sold to China. That relationship became a liability when China retaliated against Trump’s tariffs.
In response to Trump’s tariffs, China imposed new duties of 10% to 15% on several American agricultural products in 2025, including soybeans, corn, dairy and beef. For part of the year, China even stopped buying American soybeans altogether as negotiations deteriorated. The national consequences were severe. USDA reports that American agricultural exports to China declined 66% in 2025, falling to approximately $8.4 billion. China dropped from the country’s five largest agricultural export markets, driven in significant part by reciprocal tariffs and reduced soybean purchases.
Minnesota farmers felt that disruption immediately.
Soybeans and corn do not disappear when an export contract disappears. They sit in grain bins, require storage and put downward pressure on local prices as farmers compete for fewer buyers.
The Cost Side of Farmers’ Equation
The trade war, and its impact on farming revenue, would be damaging on its own but it arrived just as another crisis was increasing the cost of producing a crop - the Iran War.
The war with Iran disrupted energy and fertilizer flows through the Persian Gulf. Reuters estimated that the initial conflict cut access to approximately 17% of global natural-gas supply and more than 30% of global nitrogen-fertilizer supply. That matters because natural gas is a central input in nitrogen-fertilizer manufacturing.
The Strait of Hormuz is also a major transportation route for oil, liquefied natural gas and fertilizer. This spring, the price of Urea, one of the most widely used nitrogen-based fertilizers in the world, increased from approximately $455 per ton before the war to nearly $700 per ton—an increase of more than 50%. Moreover, national diesel prices rose from approximately $3.81 per gallon when the conflict began to roughly $5.35.
Minnesota farmers cannot simply decide not to purchase those products.
Corn requires nitrogen. Tractors require diesel. Grain must be dried, stored and transported. When input prices spike, farmers must either absorb the increase, reduce production or take on more operating debt.
The Democratic Alternative
Democrats must not lecture farmers that they were foolish to support Trump. They should tell farmers that Washington owes them more than another cycle of disruption and reimbursement.
That message can appeal beyond traditional Democratic voters. Many farmers are fiscally conservative precisely because they value independence. They would rather earn income through sales than rely upon a federal program devised after politicians damaged their market.
Farming is a business. Farmers need customers, predictable costs, functioning infrastructure and enough confidence to make multiyear investments. The Democratic argument should begin there.
Democrats should offer a trade and agriculture platform built around four commitments.
Markets over bailouts – Emergency assistance should remain available, but the primary objective must be preserving and expanding commercial demand.
Strategic and clear trade enforcement – Tariffs should target specific abuses, include measurable objectives and be coordinated with allies whenever possible. Farmers should know what success looks like and how long the policy is expected to last.
More customers/less dependence – USDA export-promotion programs should aggressively develop markets in Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and India so that American agriculture is not overly dependent on any single buyer.
Increase domestic demand – Permanent year-round E15, expanded biodiesel, domestic soybean crushing and biomanufacturing can create customers closer to the farm. This is not free-trade absolutism. It is recognition that access to markets is itself a form of agricultural security.
Farmers will listen when Democrats demonstrate that they understand commodity markets, input costs, export dependence, operating credit and the economics of an acre of corn. They will listen even more closely when Democrats offer solutions that increase their independence rather than deepen reliance on Washington.
Bottom Line
Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war have created real hardship in Minnesota farm country.
Democrats should hold him accountable. But they should not stop there.
The durable political opportunity is to offer a new rural bargain: dependable markets instead of tariff roulette, domestic demand instead of bailout dependence, competition instead of corporate concentration and resilience instead of exposure to the next global crisis.
Democrats must make the choice clear: Republicans are asking farmers to absorb the cost of chaos while Democrats have a plan to stabilize markets and lower input vulnerability so that farmers have a fair chance to make money from the crops they produce.