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Farm Bureau: Trump likely to keep using tariffs

A senior director of government relations says tariffs will likely remain part of President Trump’s trade strategy, regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Dave Salmonsen with the American Farm Bureau Federation tells Brownfield tariffs bring countries to the negotiating table.

“We’ve seen deals with the United Kingdom and several of the countries in Southeast Asia: Japan and South Korea, the recently concluded deal with China, which is gonna hopefully get them in the market purchasing soybeans again.”

Trump is the first president to impose tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allowed him to issue tariffs quickly and broadly earlier this year.

This week, SCOTUS heard arguments to determine whether IEEPA can legally be used to impose tariffs.

IEEPA is a U.S. law that grants the president authority to regulate international economic transactions in a national emergency.

“It came down to the word regulate. They went back and forth a lot. Does the word regulate also include taxing or putting on a tariff?”

Salmonsen says it’s hard to tell how the justices perceived the arguments and how quickly they’ll respond.

“Decisions could be reached in a matter of weeks or it could go to the end of their term in June before we get a decision. So we have to wait.”

But he says the outcome could still matter for farmers and ranchers. If the court decides IEEPA can’t be used for tariffs, he says it puts U.S. agriculture at risk for trade retaliation.

“Will countries say: well, you know, maybe those deals we made aren’t the deals we really wanted to make or there’s no basis for them anymore? Other countries will have to react. Our markets are impacted by U.S. trade policy. We have an interest in the outcome of this case.”

Salmonsen says it could also challenge funding for farmer ad-hoc payments.

  “They would have an impact. I think the IEEPA tariffs are about maybe half of what’s coming in every month, but there would be an impact on revenues. So that is something definitely to consider.”

However, he says President Trump can still use additional authorities outside of IEEPA to impose trade tariffs.