Jon Tester: I Don’t Think the Full Impact of Trump Tariffs Has Happened Yet

EXCERPT:

TESTER: “I would just tell you that I don’t think the full impact of the tariffs have happened yet, but I think that the administration knows it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be pumping so much money into this proposal that came out of the House that is to go into reconciliation bill. That’s basically the farm bill. And I would tell you that until farmers start feeling the wallet, and I don’t think it’s happened yet, in a lot of cases, maybe in soybean country it has, but I don’t think it has in wheat country where I’m from. Until that starts to happen, I don’t know that folks are going to change their perspective. Unfortunately, I will say this: Once it starts happening, it’s too late. And folks, the margin in farming for family farmers is not much. It’s pretty close. And you get higher input costs, you get lower market costs, you get a lot of family farmers that are going to go broke. So hopefully, hopefully the administration can change course on a lot of these markets. Like I said before, Katy, I just — I just don’t think farmers want to get the subsidies. I think they want to get their paycheck from the marketplace. That’s the way it’s always been. And I think that, let’s — let’s make the marketplace stronger. Let’s not depend upon the American taxpayer.”