During the first Trump administration, Mississippi soybean farmers were among the hardest hit by the fallout from the president’s trade war with China. Now, all Americans could soon pay more for gas, groceries and everyday items under President Donald Trump’s significantly expanded international tariffs, which are taxes the federal government imposes on imported goods.
Just after midnight, the president placed 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico, with a 10% tax on Canadian energy products. He also doubled the 10% tariffs he placed on Chinese goods in February to 20% now.
Tariffs are “a very powerful weapon that politicians haven’t used because they were either dishonest, stupid or paid off in some other form,” Trump said on Monday. “And now we’re using them.”
The Budget Lab at Yale’s Jan. 31, 2025, tariff analysis said the average U.S. household would spend over $1,000 extra this year if the tariffs took effect.
University of Mississippi Department of Economics Chairman Josh Hendrickson told the Mississippi Free Press on Feb. 7 that some Americans may see higher grocery bills than others depending on which country their food comes from. He noted that most Americans would spend several hundred dollars more on groceries each year when the tariffs are in effect.
He said the average Mississippian may not see any major price increases in their daily life depending on where their food and goods come from, but that the cost of construction, production and lumber could rise if Trump keeps the tariffs on Canada. He said the biggest question surrounding Trump’s tariffs is, “What other policies do we expect the administration to adopt at the same time?”
“What really matters is what other countries turn around and do to the United States,” Hendrickson said.
Mexico, China and Canada all vowed retaliatory tariffs in response. On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau followed through, announcing 25% tariffs on about $21 billion worth of U.S. imports, including orange juice, peanut butter, wine, spirits, beer, coffee, appliances and motorcycles, Reuters reported.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford vowed to cut off the electricity that several American states rely on, including New York, Michigan and Minnesota. “If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do anything, including cutting off their energy—with a smile on my face,” he said.
Trump: ‘We Don’t Need the Products They Have’
Tariffs raise prices but not necessarily at the rate of the tariff, the University of Mississippi’s Hendrickson noted. Tariffs on China and Europe would be more impactful than the ones on Canada and Mexico, he said.
Although the Republican president currently sells “God Bless America” Bibles made in China, he is enacting a tariff on Chinese imports because of “illegal fentanyl that they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Jan. 31. Although China banned fentanyl and all fentanyl derivatives in 2019, a 2024 Drug Enforcement Administration report said China was still the main trafficker of chemicals used to make fentanyl.
“China-based chemical suppliers are the main source of the chemicals used in the production of illicit fentanyl,” the report said.
Federal and state data shows that drug overdose deaths, which includes deaths from fentanyl overdoses, had been decreasing before Trump announced the tariffs on China. They fell by 23.7% from September 2023 to September 2024, Centers for Disease Control data from Feb. 12, 2025, shows. The U.S. had fewer than 90,000 drug overdose deaths in September 2024 for the first time since September 2020, the CDC reported.
The U.S. imports 74.5% of its toys and sports equipment, 41.1% of its shoes, 27% of its electronics and electrical machinery, and 24.5% of its fabrics and clothing from China, the Peterson Institute reports.
Canada is the U.S.’s largest supplier of aluminum—supplying 79% of the U.S.’s aluminum from January to November 2024. And Canada supplies about 30% of softwood lumber that the U.S. consumes yearly.
“We don’t need the products that they have,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Jan. 30. “We have all the oil you need. We have all the trees you need, meaning the lumber.”
The U.S. imported around 4.6 million barrels of oil from Canada each day and 500,000 to 700,000 barrels daily from Mexico in 2024, the Energy Information Administration reported in 2024. The U.S. produced about 13.5 million barrels of oil every day in 2024, EIA reported.
Senior Economist and Research Director with Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy Erica York told the Mississippi Free Press on Dec. 13, 2024, that the tariffs could harm international business relations and also lead to shortages of food, clothing and goods in the country. She noted that the U.S.’s auto-supply chain is highly integrated with Canada and Mexico, so tariffs on the two countries could throw the automotive industry into “chaos.”
Hendrickson said Canada and Mexico were in tricky situations because the U.S. is both countries’ main market for exporting goods, with Canada exporting 70% of its goods to the U.S. and Mexico shipping 80% of its goods to the country. The U.S. has “bargaining powers,” making it difficult for Canada and Mexico to find new export markets since the countries are so reliant on the U.S., the University of Mississippi professor said.
Trump’s First-Term Tariffs Hit Mississippi Soybean Farmers
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told the Mississippi Free Press at his Jackson, Miss., election watch party on Nov. 5, 2024, that he prefers trade agreements instead of tariffs; he expressed confidence that Trump’s former economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, would help steer Trump toward the best policy for the U.S. Kudlow is not in the current Trump administration.
“It’s usually better if we can drop trade barriers on both sides. So, it may be that President Trump … will use that as an incentive to get agreements like the U.S.-Canada-Mexico agreement that did not involve tariffs,” Wicker said on Nov. 5.
During his first term in 2018, Trump placed more reserved tariffs on Chinese imported goods. In retaliation, China placed tariffs on U.S. goods like airplanes, cars, aluminum, pork and soybeans. The soybean tariffs significantly affected farmers in the Mississippi Delta, who lost income because of decreased export sales, Erica York told the Mississippi Free Press.
Because of the retaliatory tariffs, Mississippi farmers collectively lost $246 million in profits from soybeans and $23 million from cotton, the USDA found in a January 2022 study. The U.S. government gave subsidy payments to farmers who lost money because of the Chinese tariffs.
A 2019 New York Times analysis said that by the end of 2019, the average U.S. household was paying an extra $500 per year because of the tariffs. York said Trump’s proposed tariffs for 2025 would be even more significant for farmers and consumers.
“If President Trump follows through on what he promised on the campaign trail—so universal tariffs on everything, higher tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada—that would absolutely be noticeable,” York said on Dec. 13, 2024. “Things on the grocery store shelves would be more expensive, home furnishings, clothing, shoes—everything that consumers buy would become more expensive.”
Hendrickson said tariffs could reduce farmers’ ability to sell crops abroad, which affects small farmers as well.
Trump Claims Tariffs Will Bring Factories to U.S.
Trump said at a campaign rally on Oct. 15, 2024, that he wanted to implement the tariffs to encourage international companies to build factories in the U.S.
“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory,” he said.
York said tariffs would have the opposite effect on international companies, increasing the cost for the companies to build factories in the U.S. She added that tariffs would “discourage international trade” and encourage other countries to enact retaliatory tariffs on exports to the U.S.
“When you look at the types of tariffs he’s considering, they would hit business inputs—so parts, materials, machinery, equipment, things you actually need to run a business in the U.S. So rather than encouraging new manufacturing investments, it actually increases the cost of operating in the United States,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Dec. 13, 2024.
Hendrickson said the Trump administration believes that China consistently keeps its currency undervalued so people will think Chinese goods are cheaper than U.S. goods, which is one reason why many manufacturers moved to China.
The professor noted that China can evade tariffs in the existing system because the government does not impose tariffs on items worth $800 or less. China uses the loophole to package goods in $800 shipments and the U.S. then repackages them into more expensive shipments once they arrive in the country.
People will see the biggest change in packages they order from popular online shops Shein and Temu if China has to stop packaging goods cheaply because of Trump’s new tariffs, Hendrickson said.
U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Democrat in Congress, told the Mississippi Free Press at his Bolton, Miss., reelection celebration on Nov. 5, 2024, that the tariffs would be “devastating” because they increase costs in the agricultural industry.
“Equipment would cost more to harvest the crops and ultimately the crops that are harvested going into the markets would cost more. Ultimately, those tariffs would be bad for the American economy, not just Mississippians but Americans as a whole,” he said.
Hendrickson warned that an international trade war “makes everything more expensive for everybody.”
Comments are closed.