WASHINGTON D.C. – President Donald Trump hears growers’ grumblings about his tariff policies and has promised to respond with a bailout, but that won’t help bring back farm workers living in fear and poverty.
Even conservative voices are taking issues with the Trump Administration’s tariffs and the effect they are having on American agriculture. The GOP-leaning publication National Review argues a proposed $12 billion bailout for farmers it says he “kneecapped” with his trade policies, “again,” won’t really solve the problem.
“The president would rather pay farmers off with taxpayer funds than let them compete in a global marketplace,” argues the publication. “Trump bails out the farmers with billions of federal dollars and changes nothing about the tariffs that hurt them in the first place.” Trump’s view is that it is all Biden’s fault.
The “again” in their statement refers to Trump’s first term when his tariffs led to retaliation from China and the price of soybeans sunk. Trump followed with a $23 billion bailout for farmers. As of Dec. 10, total US soybean sales to China this year are at roughly 2.7 million tons, well short of the 12-million-ton target announced a few weeks ago by US officials. Even agricultural equipment manufacturers are seeing weak demand and want some help, too.
Now there is a new $12 billion bailout package for farmers, but soybean futures are down over 7% from when Trump promised a big sale to China in November.
President Trump’s vigorous deportation policies have also hit the farm economy — both farmers and farm workers. And the meat packing, landscaping, restaurant and construction industries are also feeling it. Earlier, Trump said he would target criminals, but now it seems every car wash worker in LA appears to have a target on their back.
Restaurants, construction and landscaping businesses have lost a combined 315,000 immigrant workers through August this year, more than any other industries, according to national nonprofit newsroom Stateline’s analysis of Current Population Survey data provided by the University of Minnesota.
Just in California, the noncitizen workforce is down 12.3%, or 327,600 workers, between this May and July, according to a November report by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. Trump’s border patrol, National Guard and ICE raids have been active around the state, escalating fear among the workforce. The most recent raids have come in the fields around Santa Maria and Ventura.
FLEEING THE FIELDS
Being targeted by a federal immigration crackdown is just one of the many trends working against farm workers, who are certainly not in line for any type of bailout.
Farmworkers in California are an aging workforce. Farmworkers aged 55 to 64 increased by 64% between 2009 and 2019, according to a 2023 report by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center.
And they are not being paid fairly, argues the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. The Kern County-based union has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor over the October guidelines for laborers who are in the United States under temporary, H-2A visas. The new guidelines set lower wages — differentiating them by state — including pay cuts to account for the value of free housing provided by law to foreign workers. The rule has the effect of “drastically cutting the minimum wage that U.S. employers must pay foreign farmworkers, all while costs and wages in other sectors have sharply increased,” the lawsuit states, adding that the lower pay for foreign workers will also force cuts for American workers. The lawsuit asks a federal judge in California to halt implementation of the guidelines and recalculate wages.
The lawsuit argues that “On October 2, the Department of Labor announced a new rule that cuts the wages of H-2A workers between $5 to $7 per hour, directly transferring $2.46 billion dollars in wages from workers to employers annually, according to the administration’s own estimates. This rule will also immediately lower the wages of any U.S. citizen workers sharing job sites with H-2A workers, and make it financially easier to hire foreign H-2A guest workers over U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.”
“Farm workers, and the rural communities across America they sustain, need and deserve fair wages and job security, not a race to the bottom with an endless supply of cheap foreign labor,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
UFW points to the Valley’s citrus industry this month in an X post featuring a man named “Julio” harvesting mandarins in the Fresno area with the hashtag WeFeedYou. “We’re paid $55 per 900lb bin — the same amount as the past few years. This is wrong. The cost of living has gone up. Why haven’t our wages? We work hard and deserve to earn enough to feed our families.”
The administration did offer some aid to the citrus industry overall. USDA will purchase up to $30 million in fresh citrus through the Agricultural Marketing Service’s Section 32 program to support American growers and provide healthy fruit to food banks across the country.
Specialty crops had not been added to the bailout list as of press time but that move is expected soon.
Exeter-based California Citrus Mutual reports this season’s navels are around 10-15% harvested. The increased volume of domestic supply and early abundance of larger fruit is likely contributing to some of the drops in pricing averages, they say. In comparison to the past three years, large sizes are down in price per pound while small sizes are higher. Fruit count is down, and fruit sizing is up, arguably bullish for a good season.
