Tariffs Cut Deep Into South Dakota Farm Income as Federal Aid Surges
New $12 billion bailout arrives as crop prices fall, input costs rise, and long-term markets weaken.
By Todd Epp, Northern Plains News
South Dakota farmers face widening financial losses as tariff-driven price drops collide with rising production costs, forcing taxpayers to cover billions in emergency payments that still trail behind the damage.
Why It Matters
The state’s farm economy enters 2026 under pressure. Tariffs have reworked global trade flows, pushed input costs higher, and left major buyers like China on the sidelines. Federal aid will help stabilize balance sheets this winter, but agricultural economists warn the underlying problems—lost markets, high costs, and prolonged volatility—remain unresolved and could reshape the long-term viability of South Dakota’s row-crop sector.
Farm income has dropped across the Plains as commodity prices fall below breakeven levels. Analysts estimate that U.S. growers of major row crops face tens of billions in reduced revenue for 2025, according to industry and government economic models. In South Dakota, farmers report steep losses on corn as prices slide from pandemic-era highs to levels that no longer cover rising production costs.
The state’s soybean sector has taken the largest hit. China, normally a dominant buyer in global soybean markets, sharply reduced purchases for much of 2025, tightening margins across the Upper Midwest. South Dakota typically harvests about 230 million bushels a year, making soybeans a cornerstone of the state’s $11 billion agriculture industry.
Federal Payments Rise as Markets Collapse
South Dakota received an estimated $418 million in federal emergency support through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program as of September, according to the Dakota Institute. The Trump administration approved an additional $12 billion in aid on Monday, with payments expected by late February.
But federal analysts and budget groups report that the economics do not balance out. Tariff collections generated roughly $195 billion in fiscal year 2025, a sharp increase from the prior year. Yet crop losses combined with federal farm payments consumed an estimated $70 billion to $80 billion nationwide, based on figures from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and historical USDA payment data.
The dynamic mirrors Trump’s first term, when farmer relief programs amounted to nearly the full value of tariffs collected from China, according to research from the Council on Foreign Relations. Agricultural markets suffered long-term damage as former export partners shifted to producers in Brazil and other suppliers, weakening U.S. leverage even after tariff revenues climbed.
Costs Up, Prices Down
South Dakota producers face the double pressure of lower commodity prices and higher operating costs. Tariffs on agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, machinery, and certain chemicals add to expenses already elevated by global supply chain disruptions. Analysts with agricultural lenders report that the per-acre cost of raising corn and soybeans continues to rise faster than market prices, leaving many farms reliant on federal assistance to break even.
Younger farmers bear the greatest financial risk, as tighter credit, smaller land bases, and limited cash reserves reduce their ability to withstand continued price volatility. Industry economists warn that prolonged market disruption could accelerate consolidation in rural communities and weaken the state’s long-term agricultural capacity.
Future Revenue Clouded by Legal Challenges
The Congressional Budget Office projects that current tariff policies could generate up to several trillion dollars through 2035 if maintained. But legal challenges continue to move through federal courts, and a Supreme Court ruling on presidential tariff authority could force the government to refund tens of billions of dollars to importers, shrinking future revenue and limiting the administration’s ability to offset agricultural losses through new aid packages.
And yet, individuals with room-temperature IQs will somehow claim that tariffs are a good thing.
Worst economic policy in 200 years. Why are Trump supporters so stupid?
The decline in demand from China is further evidence that China’s population is less than reported. Don’t blame it all on tariffs.
Many demographers have suspected that China’s population figures are bogus.
Their fertility rate is possibly as low as 0.8. They have the most rapidly aging population in history. We may never know how many Chinese people died during the height of the Covid pandemic, but we know here that 93% of the deaths were in people over 50 years of age.
People outside of China point to vacant high-rise apartment buildings, and we are told that owning an apartment you don’t live in is a good investment. They say Empty apartments appreciate in value, an idea that doesn’t make much sense to us here, but maybe it’s true, that the Chinese think an empty apartment is a good place to stash wealth..But we can see videos of buildings in disrepair. And there are abandoned villages, too.
Population figures are politicized. The only way the rest of the world can figure out what is going on in China is by food consumption. When data about reduced consumption of vegetable protein is noticed, we are told there has been a cultural shift to eating more animal protein. And then avian influenza hits and the whole poultry industry is eradicated for a season, and nobody blinks.
There’s more going on here than tariffs. Growing food to sell to China might not be a good long-range plan.
Wait, last I heard the COVID hoax didn’t kill anyone, it was just the vaccines? You people need to pick just one story; this isn’t a religion.
who is “you people?” I have never said Covid was a hoax!
Google the subject of demographers’ doubts about China’s population numbers and you find all kinds of interesting stuff, Like how kindergarten enrollment dropped by 25% between 2020 and 2024.
Who are you ‘hearing’ from? Covid killed millions across the entire world. That’s undeniable. The vaccine has killed millions more over time. It’s not done yet.
no the vaccine is not killing millions.
But what we did learn: the disease is particularly severe in people with Vitamin D deficiency. People who drink lots of milk and spend plenty of time outside (think children and young adults) were much less likely to get sick. The word came out of Kaiser Permanente in the Pacific Northwest, around April 2020, where the first deaths at a long term care facility in Kirkland WA were reported, that the one co-morbidity all the victims had was severe Vitamin D deficiency. I learned this from my sister who worked for Kaiser Permanente. All the employees had been briefed.
And what did our political leaders do with that information? They closed the beaches, parks, cafes, etc, all the outdoor places, and told people to hide indoors. No Vitamin D for you!!
Then we learned that covid deaths were being caused by blood clots: strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary emboli. Hospitalized patients were all prescribed blood thinners. This information was also out in the first half of 2020. And what did our political leaders do? They told us to “stay home if you’re sick.” For many people, that advice was equivalent to “stay in bed and limit physical activity, ” which only increased their risk of blood clot formation. They didn’t advise people to remain active, stay hydrated, or ask their doctors if they could take low-dose aspirin every day.
There were things people could have done to limit risk, but the public was not informed. That should have been the scandal: that the public was not encouraged to increase their sun exposure or Vitamin D intake, stay active, stay hydrated, and take 81 mg of Aspirin everyday. Simple, inexpensive things almost everybody could have done to reduce their risk.
I attribute these failures to incompetence.
Go MAGA! Winning!
I sure hope the farmers/ranchers/landowners that are anti pipeline, wind energy, and data centers because they are funded by boondoggle subsidies and hard-earned tax money refuse to take a dime of this aid money. Let the free market prevail.
Trade wars are easy to win.
MAGA MORONS….
You cannot make a man see the truth when his entire existence depends on denying it.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The candidates like Casey Crabtree and Marty Jackley are still promoting Trump while he destroys the economy and the US dollar. Idiocracy is here.
It isn’t just those two Trumpkins. Name us ANY currently serving Republican official in SD who has uttered so much as a little peep in opposition to Trump or to his abysmal economic policies. Most of the citizens of SD are having the economy they voted for, and thus the economy they deserve. The minority who didn’t vote for this abysmal tarrified cesspool are being forced to live with what they DON’T deserve. A sad situation for all.
In Trump’s press conference talking about the aid package, he literally went on to say that he will target Canadian fertilizer for higher tariffs to encourage more domestic production. In other words, he’s going to poke another hole in the boat but going to make a new boat later.
If the goal is to break the small farmer, he is totally winning!