INDIANAPOLIS — President Trump’s trade policies are sending tremors across Indiana, as voters reliant on the agriculture and manufacturing industries that are the backbone of a thriving state economy brace for the fallout from retaliatory tariffs being slapped on U.S. exports.
Trump’s aggressive imposing of tariffs on foreign imports to negotiate more favorable trading terms for American products threatens to upend a strong Indiana economy that exports $4.6 billion annually in agriculture commodities, according to government figures. The state is the nation’s fourth largest harvester of soybeans, and more than 100,000 jobs depend on farms that are 97 percent family-owned.
Indiana also is a manufacturing hub that sustains hundreds of thousands of factory jobs. That’s why the Republicans that dominate politics here, and the voters they represent, are growing anxious as the disputes with China and other countries that Trump instigated and, once boasted would be easy to win, show signs of escalating into a full blown trade war.
“The ag community is extremely nervous,” Indiana Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, a Republican who oversees the state department of agriculture, said this week in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “It seems to be our president’s modus operandi to push issues to get a agreeable settlement. We are hopeful that that is what is happening here.”
Trump has urged patience, promising jittery Republicans and loyal supporters in farm country that the administration’s strategy will pay big long-term dividends. Conceding the initial pain his policies could inflict, the president has proposed a $12 billion federal bailout to keep the agriculture industry afloat during what could be protracted negotiations.
Republicans are hesitant to criticize Trump, preferring a united front — and hoping to avoid his Twitter wrath — heading into the midterm elections. But privately, they are concerned Trump’s trade agenda and liberal use of tariffs could be a drag on the economy less than 100 days before the vote. Republicans’ whole strategy for surviving a bruising fall campaign revolves around voters connecting the booming job market with GOP accomplishments in Congress.
[More: Senate sends Trump a warning shot on tariffs]
Democrats could flip the House, although Republicans remain positioned to gain Senate seats — if political headwinds don’t transform into a tsunami. In Indiana, Republicans are optimistic about their Senate nominee, businessman Mike Braun, picking off Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. Few here expect the state to emerge from an extended trade dispute unscathed. That includes GOP voters who intend to pull the lever for Braun.
“We have a large manufacturing base here, and some of these local companies are being affected by these tariffs, and it may cause a downward trend,” worried retiree Patrick O’Keefe, 70, of Jasper, a middle-class community in Southern Indiana, which is heavily reliant on agriculture and manufacturing. “Let’s not stop the growth.”
There is fresh evidence that Trump’s high-stakes trade gambit could have collateral damage. This week, a South Carolina consumer electronics manufacturer blamed tariffs for its decision to lay off 126 workers and close a factory. Previously, other domestic manufacturers announced plans to expand overseas to avoid tariffs, with others warning that they, too, might be forced to slash payrolls.
But amid the high anxiety, Republicans in Indiana are being shielded from political blowback, for now at least, because enough Hoosiers appear to agree with Trump’s trade policies in principle and have faith in his talents as a negotiator. Indeed, some voters who concede that they are in the firing line of the president’s tariffs say they are willing to take the blows short term because they have confidence he’ll deliver.
“In the long run, [Trump] is doing it for the right reasons, trying to equalize things,” said Mike Hopf, 54, a farm machinery salesman in Southern Indiana who usually votes Republican.
Charles Simons, 76, a retired orthodontist who owns 3,000 to 4,000 acres of farmland in Northern Indiana, said flatly that he expects Trump’s trade agenda to cost him money. His land, tilled by tenant farmers, grows soybeans and corn, the former of which has been particularly targeted with retaliatory tariffs by China, a major export market for American agriculture.
Yet he is secure that Trump understands the risks to the industry and is negotiating properly, with an eye toward rebalancing U.S. trading relationships in a way that will make farm country whole and put the country in a wealthier position.
“The president is right that we have to address the issue. Tariffs are way out of control and have been for maybe generations,” said Simons, after hearing from Braun at a Rotary Club luncheon in Kokomo, a middle-class community north of Indianapolis that is brooked by farmland. “Yes, we’re going to have to pay a little bit of a price. And, I am willing to do that and I think a lot of farmers are willing to do that.”
