Why American Farmers Are Nervous About USMCA

Westin: This is a story about not making things worse. As the U.S., Mexico and Canada negotiate over continuation of their three-way trade agreement, U.S. farmers look on with apprehension. They've already been hit hard by troubled export markets elsewhere

in the world, particularly to China. -Our farmers are true patriots because China and others have targeted, China and others, remember this, have targeted our farmers. Westin: In rural Iowa, Stu Swanson has just planted his 34th and likely most challenging crop.

-Unfortunately, the clock is ticking on us. We're at this point where we need to get a plan going forward. Or the operation may come to an end. And my farming operation, I would do anything I had

to keep it alive. I would go find another job. I would downsize or upsize or whatever I need to do. But the heritage of and the sacrifices that my parents

and grandparents made, I don't want to be the generation or the person that fails and lets them down. It's something I think about daily. It's something I think a lot about in the dark of night that keeps me up.

We have to find a way going forward. And we've kind of been operating on hope the last few years. That hope is starting to dwindle. Westin: Swanson is a corn, soy and pig farmer and

on the board of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. We met him a year ago on his farm amid a tough period for the agriculture industry. A lot of farms, I understand, are actually cash negative. Are you cash positive?

-I haven't ran a number to tell you today. Certainly, we know that over the last three years, we've seen about a 30 percent decline in commodity prices. I think over that same time, we've seen the nine major crops all be underwater.

So we are producing at a loss on the nine major crops. Westin: In the year since, conditions appear only to have gotten worse, even after a $12 billion aid package from the Trump administration.

-It's been a tough winter and spring. We've lost farmers in our neighborhood and across the state that took their lives because of the struggles they've seen. We've seen farmers that weren't able to get financing for the 2026 crop.

And so, unfortunately, when we have low returns, at somepoint the financing dries up. Westin: If U.S. trade policy overall has been rough on farmers, the one bright spot has been the USMCA, which has shifted exports

from declining Chinese business to growing business with Canada and Mexico. Since 2023, China has slipped from the top export market for U.S. agriculture to third, with Mexico now top and Canada second.

-Since NAFTA to today, since it was inception to today, U.S. ag exports to Mexico and Canada have grown about 600 percent. Westin: Tom Halverson is the CEO of CoBank, which operates

as a farm credit bank. -The most important thing I can say about that is, you know, this has been a massive trade liberalization success in the agricultural sector. I'm not going to speak to autos or other industries

and so forth, but from an agricultural perspective, it's been a tremendous success. Does that mean every single agricultural producer in every nook and cranny of the United States has benefit from it? No, that's not the way economics works, right?

You have winners, you have losers. But the biggest number of winners, the biggest incremental value creation has come from the liberalization of these markets. To me, moving backward would be to reverse that trend, increase tariffs, increase market barriers, drive our closest neighbors and